When any industry faces challenging times, thoughts turn to what might happen to those companies which are unable to maintain their solvency and service their existing debt.

In a recent case1, the High Court concluded that it was right to sanction schemes of arrangement which formed part of a wider debt restructuring that excluded out-of-the-money junior creditors. In doing so, it valued the distressed companies on a going concern basis.

Background

On 18 March 2014, the State Bank of Vietnam (SBV) issued Circular No. 09/2014/TT-NHNN (Circular 09) to amend and supplement a number of articles in Circular No. 02/2013/TT-NHNN regulating the classification of debt, the establishment and levels of risk reserves, and the use of reserves for dealing with risks during the operation of credit institutions and foreign bank branches.

On June 6, 2017, Australian-based mining equipment supplier Emeco Holdings emerged from chapter 15 proceedings in the Southern District of New York following an Australian court’s sanctioning of the company’s scheme of arrangement.

The scheme of arrangement was a component of an innovative, comprehensive restructuring that provided for a three-way merger of three large Australian mining service companies and a restructuring of A$680 million of debt through a debt-for-equity swap, rights offering, and full refinancing.

With its judgment of November 28, 2016, the German Supreme Tax Court (Bundesfinanzhof; “BFH”) dismissed the application of the tax administration’s so-called restructuring decree (Sanierungserlass). The restructuring decree allowed, subject to certain conditions, a suspension and abatement of taxes on so-called cancellation-of-debt income (“COD-Income”) otherwise resulting from certain recapitalization measures such as the waiver of debt and “debt-to-equity swaps”.

In 2016, the Ukrainian parliament passed the Law on Financial Restructuring (the Financial Restructuring Law) with the aim of creating a workable procedure for voluntarily restructuring debt obligations of Ukrainian borrowers. Technically, the Financial Restructuring Law became effective on 19 October 2016 but did not become operational because the required bodies envisaged in the Financial Restructuring Law were not in place.

In 2016, the Ukrainian parliament passed the Law on Financial Restructuring (the "Financial Restructuring Law") with the aim of creating a workable procedure for voluntarily restructuring debt obligations of Ukrainian borrowers. Technically, the Financial Restructuring Law became effective on 19 October 2016 but did not become operational because the required bodies envisaged in the Financial Restructuring Law were not in place.

On 2 August 2021, the Treasury released a consultation paper seeking feedback on changes to improve creditors’ schemes of arrangement in Australia (the Consultation Paper). The submissions process has now closed.

Singapore’s new (the Omnibus Bill) was passed by parliament on 1 October 2018 and is expected to come into force later this year or in early 2019.

The Omnibus Bill, which was introduced to parliament on 10 September 2018, consolidates Singapore's corporate and personal insolvency and restructuring laws into a single enactment. It also generally updates the insolvency legislation and introduces a significant number of new provisions, particularly in respect of corporate insolvency.

The Singapore Government has just passed the Companies (Amendment) Bill 13/2017 (the Bill), which contains major changes to Singapore’s restructuring and insolvency laws. As planned, these changes are expected to come into effect at the latest by the second quarter of 2017,1 and will be a major shake-up to the restructuring landscape of the region.