When undergoing a restructuring, a borrower/officeholder's main focus is often the company's lenders. However, there are occasions when HMRC's agreement can be just as key to ensuring any process runs smoothly. In this article, Sonia Jordan and Hayley Çapani discuss some key areas where HMRC's agreement is essential to ensuring a smooth restructuring or insolvency process.

Under the equity of exoneration, where jointly owned property is charged to secure the indebtedness of one joint owner, the other joint owner is presumed, in the absence of evidence to the contrary, to be acting as a surety only, and is entitled to be exonerated by the principal debtor. This long established principle remains relevant in the modern day, as was recently demonstrated in Day v Shaw.

The UK has long-since established itself as a jurisdiction of choice for complex cross-border restructurings involving corporate groups whose principal operations are overseas.

Many will be familiar with the words “further advances” and associate this term with typical boiler plate provisions in finance documents.

In a recent case (In the matter of Black Ant Co Ltd (in administration) [2014] EWHC 1161 (Ch)(15 April 2014) the High Court provided useful commentary on the meaning of “further advances” in the context of the priority of security.

Introduction

The Chancellor’s 2014 Budget speech revealed significant  changes to the way in which pension scheme members will be  able to access their savings. This move falls as just one of a raft  of changes to workplace pensions which Steve Webb MP has  described as a “pensions revolution”.

Restrictive covenant - if in doubt, lender should be notified; the costs risk of insolvency proceedings; interim payments; service of claim form; Wragge & Co's banking and finance experts bring you the latest on the cases and issues affecting the lending industry.

Restrictive covenant - if in doubt, lender should be notified

Introduction

Fixed and floating charges – why are they important?

They give a lender a higher position in the queue for the net proceeds of a borrower’s assets in the event of a borrower’s insolvency.

The Bankruptcy and Debt Advice (Scotland) Bill was passed by the Scottish Parliament on 20 March 2014, containing significant amendments to Scottish personal bankruptcy legislation.

Modernising Personal Bankruptcy

Can a debtor be found to be balance sheet or cash flow insolvent even though its obligations are limited (in terms of creditor recourse) to the available assets? This was the question facing the High Court in Re ARM Asset Backed Securities SA [2013] EWCH 3351.

The background