CEIOPS holds annual conference: CEIOPS has held its annual conference. The event included a panel session on Solvency II and discussion by Sharon Bowles of the new European Supervisory Authorities.

Background

Parliament made a resolution calling on the Commission to adopt draft laws before the end of the year to help manage cross-border institutional crises. The measures should provide a common minimum set of rules, encourage convergence of national resolution and insolvency laws, and ultimately establish an EU resolution and insolvency regime. Parliament wants to see more crisis management powers to supervisory authorities, probably coordinated by the new European Banking Authority (EBA) (which takes over from CEBS).

Receivables financiers, lenders taking security assignments over contractual rights, participants in the secondary loan market and others have an interest in:

The Commission has agreed a plan to split Northern Rock into two banks, a “good” and a “bad” one. The “good” bank will carry on the economic activities of Northern Rock and the “bad” one will be an asset management company that will run down the remaining business. The Commission found the UK Government had kept state aid to a minimum in planning the restructuring. Treasury is pleased with the approval, which it says will allow Northern Rock to return to the mortgage markets while the back book of mortgages is managed separately.

On 23 September the Insolvency Service published responses to its "Review of the Corporate Insolvency Framework consultation" which in May had suggested four key changes to the UK’s corporate insolvency regime:

The Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) has given a preliminary ruling on when a security holder has "possession or…control" of financial collateral for the purposes of Directive 2002/47 on financial collateral arrangements. From an English law perspective, this is particularly relevant for anyone considering whether a floating charge over financial collateral qualifies as a security financial collateral arrangement (or SFCA).

Background – UK implementation and interpretation

Bloomberg reported last month that the Madoff bankruptcy has one more big case to go, chasing USD3.2b held by foreign banks (see our related story above). Mr Picard, the bankruptcy trustee, has reportedly recovered over USD14b of the USD17.5b in losses arising from Madoff's Ponzi scheme.

On 22 November 2016, The European Commission announced a proposal for a new, more consistent approach to business insolvency across the member states of the EU. It is hoped that the proposed directive will create greater efficiencies in the insolvency process, enhance financial stability and provide greater certainty to investors and companies operating across the EU.

Bank structural reform: too big to fail, too big to save and too complex to manage, supervise and resolve? 1.1 The case for bank structural reform Bank structural reform is the result of a global financial crisis which developed in the summer of 2007 and became obvious in the EU in the latter part of 2008. The EU Member States that share an economic and monetary union (‘the Eurozone’) began to appear particularly vulnerable: the Greek sovereign debt crisis became apparent in early 2010 and serious economic problems emerged in Ireland, Portugal, Italy and Spain.