If a tenant appoints a voluntary administrator, the Corporations Act protects the administrator from Landlords who would otherwise be able to re-enter the premises.

It is important to act decisively to recover possession of your premises before an administrator is appointed.

This week’s TGIF concerns Kennedy Civil Contracting Pty Ltd (Admins Appt) v Richard Crookes Construction Pty Ltd [2023] NSWSC 99, in which the New South Wales Supreme Court determined that an insolvent company’s creditors could properly make a DOCA to maintain the right under security of payment legislation to recover amounts that would have been lost on entry into liquidation.

Key takeaways

This article analyses the decision of Ball J in Kennedy Civil Contracting Pty Ltd (Administrators Appointed) (KCC) v Richard Crookes Construction Pty Ltd (RCC); in the matter of Kennedy Civil Contracting Pty Ltd [2023] NSWSC 99 and considers the ramifications for the scope of section 32B of the Building and Construction Industry Security of Payment Act 1999 (NSW) (SOP Act).

An administration is intended to achieve one of two objectives: 1. to rescue the company as a going concern; or 2. to achieve a better result for the company's creditors as a whole than would be likely if the company was placed into liquidation

Object

Liquidation involves the collection of the company's assets, the realisation of those assets and the distribution of the proceeds of their sale to the company's creditors.

Process of appointing liquidator

Over the past decade, insolvency practitioners have developed an intrigue for the use of the creditors’ trust. Many have sought to structure their Deeds of Company Arrangement’s (DOCA) in a way that interfaces with a creditors’ trust through the mechanism of a creditors’ trust deed.  

This week’s TGIF considers the recent ruling of the Queensland Supreme Court in Re Gulf Aboriginal Development Company Ltd[2021] QSC 310, where the Court dismissed an application to terminate the winding up of Gulf Aboriginal Development Company Limited (Gulf).

Key Takeaways

This week’s TGIF considers In the matter of Habibi Waverton (in liquidation) (administrator appointed) [2021] NSWSC 1443, a recent decision of the Supreme Court of NSW in which the Court opted to use its general powers to allow a voluntary administrator to transfer shares without the owner’s consent to implement a DOCA.

Key Takeaways

One gauge of the level of business distress is the number of bankruptcy applications filed, which have risen sharply in 2021. Often seen as a last resort, this indicates that despite the continued support of the government and financial institutions, many businesses see filing bankruptcy as the best option for their businesses to survive. According to the Central Bankruptcy Court (Bankruptcy Court), 9,171 bankruptcy proceedings were filed in 2020 for a total value of THB 836.803 billion (compared to 5,415 cases in 2018 and 8,398 in 2019).

As participants in the Australian debt restructuring market continue to innovate we expect to see an increase in these control transactions, testing further again the Australian statutory regimes.