In a lecture delivered on 16 October, Lord Justice Jackson has argued the case in favour of bringing insolvency litigation into line with other types of civil litigation, where CFA success fees and ATE insurance premiums are no longer recoverable from losing opponents: see the 2015 Mustill lecture “The Civil Justice Reforms and Whether Insolvency Litigation Should Be Exempt”.
The Court of Appeal has held that claimant liquidators were in breach of an “unless order” for e-disclosure, overturning the High Court’s decision that there was no breach despite the mistaken omission of certain important categories of documents from the list:Smailes v McNally [2014] EWCA Civ 1296. The result was that the liquidators’ claim was struck out.
timeline - a guide to the legal milestones ahead CALENDA R OF KEY ISSUES (UK PERSPECTIVE) MAY 2014 LEGAL GUIDE ABOUT HERBERT SMITH FREEHILLS We are one of the world’s leading law firms. We advise many of the biggest and most ambitious organisations across all major regions of the globe. Our clients trust us with their most important transactions, disputes and projects because of our ability to cut through complexity and mitigate risk. We can help you thrive in the global economy.
While the M&A pipeline remains strong and the usual acquisition models for listed companies (takeovers and schemes of arrangement) remain active, as talk turns to economic headwinds and rising interest rates, it is worth bearing in mind the third possible pathway to acquire a listed company in a distressed context: the “DOCA takeover”.
IN BRIEF
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Jurisdictions across the globe have sought to expand their restructuring toolkits – spurred on by Governments seeking to support business during the pandemic. This has had a significant impact on the options available when restructuring business in Asia Pacific.
On 14 May 2021, the Vice-President of the Supreme People’s Court of the PRC and the Hong Kong Secretary for Justice signed a brief Record of Meeting, setting out a consensus on the mutual recognition of and assistance to insolvency proceedings between the Mainland China and Hong Kong.
The Australian chapter of GRR’s Asia-Pacific Restructuring Review 2021, authored by Herbert Smith Freehills, is now available and reproduced below.
This latest edition covers major Australian legislative developments, transactions and case law relating to restructuring and insolvency in Australia over the past 12 months including:
Legislation
- Temporary COVID-19 insolvency law amendments
- Anti-phoenixing amendments to the Corporations Act
Key restructurings
In UDA Land Sdn Bhd v Puncak Sepakat Sdn Bhd [2020] MLJU 892, the High Court was required to determine whether an award should be set aside because the sole arbitrator (“Arbitrator”) wrongly concluded that it had no jurisdiction to determine a counterclaim and insolvency set-off raised in the arbitration. The High Court set aside the award on the basis that the Arbitrator made an error of law in finding that it had no jurisdiction to hear the counterclaim and set-off.
Background
The new Corporate Insolvency and Governance Bill, currently expected to be enacted in mid-June 2020, is likely significantly to impact secured and unsecured bank debt.
In Joint Provisional Liquidators of Moody Technology Holdings Ltd [2020] HKCFI 416, the Hong Kong Court of First Instance (the “Hong KongCourt”) granted a recognition order to foreign provisional liquidators who were appointed on a soft-touch basis, to explore and facilitate the restructuring of a company. The order was made despite soft-touch provisional liquidation being per se impermissible in Hong Kong.
Background