The Hogan Lovells’ Corporate Insurance Newsletter for January 2020 has been published. This provides a round-up of UK, EU and international regulatory developments relevant to UK based insurance market participants. In this issue, amongst other items, we cover:
Tightening trade restrictions and concerns swirling around intellectual property rights are creating new risks for conglomerates faced with financial stress, especially when it comes to selling their assets.
When conglomerates encounter financial difficulties, they often sell assets to raise cash and pay off debts. But governments in the United States and elsewhere have begun to increase scrutiny of sales of assets to foreign entities buyers. Many governments have the power to restrict certain sales of assets on the basis of national interest concerns.
The Court of Justice of the EU (CJEU) has held once again that the Insolvency Directive does not require member states to put measures in place to fully fund lost pension rights on the insolvency of an employer. This conclusion is contrary to some reporting in the pensions press earlier today.
Italy is already implementing the Directive (EU) 2019/1023 of the European Parliament and the Council of 20 June 2019 (the “Directive”), related to the preventive restructuring frameworks, discharge and measures aiming at increasing the effectiveness of restructuring, insolvency and discharge procedures, that Member States shall implement within 17 July 2021.
The European Court of Justice has handed down its decision in Pensions-Sicherungs-Verein VVaG v Günther Bauer. The case relates to Article 8 of Directive 2008/94/EC, which requires Member States to take measures to protect employees’ rights to old age benefits in the event of the employer's insolvency.
L’Italia sembra essere in netto anticipo nel recepimento della direttiva (UE) 2019/1023 del Parlamento Europeo e del Consiglio del 20 giugno 2019 (la “Direttiva”), riguardante i quadri di ristrutturazione preventiva, l'esdebitazione e le interdizioni, e le misure volte ad aumentare l'efficacia delle procedure di ristrutturazione, insolvenza ed esdebitazione, che gli Stati membri dovranno fare propria entro il 17 luglio 2021.
In this chapter of our Annual Insurance Review 2020, we look at the main developments in 2019 and expected issues in 2020 for restructuring and insolvency.
Key developments in 2019
In one of the leading insurance insolvency and restructuring cases of 2019, Ballantyne Re, plc (Ballantyne) used an Irish scheme of arrangement to restructure its reinsurance obligations and outstanding indebtedness (the Scheme).
To date, EU-wide insolvency legislation has focused on resolving conflicts of laws issues between Member States. Now that the Preventive Restructuring Framework Directive (the "Directive")1 has successfully navigated its way through the Council and European Parliament (albeit with some significant amendments to the original text), all of that is set to change.
As mentioned in our earlier blog, the Dutch legislator has prepared a bill – the Act on confirmation of private restructuring plans (Wet homologatie onderhands akkoord) – introducing a framework that allows debtors to restructure their debts outside formal insolvency proceedings (the “Dutch Scheme“). We expect this highly-anticipated bill to enter into force by this summer.
2019 was for many a year of waiting…we waited, and waited and indeed still wait…for Brexit. That inevitably has had an impact on the property world and in particular the investment market experiencing a degree of inactivity. Somewhat ironically though Brexit has given us one of several important decisions in 2019 relevant to the Real Estate Disputes world.