On 1 November 2023, the Supreme Court has overturned the 2021 Divisional Court judgment in R (on the application of Palmer) v Northern Derbyshire Magistrates Court and another to hold that administrators do not fall within the meaning of a "director, manager, secretary or similar officer of the company" under s194(3) the Trade Union and Labour Relations (Consolidation) Act 1992 (TULCRA 1992).
This ideal is floating around:
- upon removal of a Subchapter V debtor from possession, for fraud or other cause,
- the Subchapter V trustee has no expanded right, power, function or duty beyond operating debtor’s business (the “Ideal”).
This Ideal is both:
- contrary to unambiguous language of the Bankruptcy Code, as a matter of law; and
- in Never-Never Land, as a matter of practice.
I’ll try to explain.
This is a truism:
In 2018, Singapore enacted the Insolvency, Restructuring and Dissolution Act (IRDA 2018), which streamlined its debt restructuring regime by consolidating provisions previously set out in various statutes into a piece of omnibus legislation.
Among other developments, the IRDA 2018 built upon existing provisions relating to pre-packed schemes of arrangement (i.e. pre-packed schemes) and enhanced pre-packed schemes as a viable tool in Singapore’s arsenal of debt restructuring mechanisms.
The Supreme Court judgment in the case of R (on the application of Palmer) (Appellant) v Northern Derbyshire Magistrates Court and another (Respondents) was handed down on 1 November 2023.
Is a court order necessary for security interests granted after the appointment of external administrators? Perhaps not.
The Insolvency Service (IS), acting on behalf of the Secretary of State for Business and Trade, commenced disqualification proceedings against five former non-executive directors (NEDs) of Carillion plc in January 2021, following the compulsory liquidation of the Carillion Group in January 2018. Last month on the eve of trial, the IS discontinued its disqualification proceedings against the NEDs.
On 19 July 2023, the parliament of the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg (Luxembourg) passed bill no. 6539A into law (the New Insolvency Law), marking a significant milestone in the movement to modernise and enhance the competitiveness of Luxembourg’s insolvency framework. The bill has been under discussion for a number of years and aims to curtail the use of bankruptcy as an insolvency solution in favour of the preemptive preservation or reorganisation of financially distressed companies.
On 30 October 2023, HM Treasury (“HMT”) published 3 key updates on its proposed approach to regulating cryptoassets under the UK’s financial services regulatory framework, namely:
Amendments to the director disqualification regime, enacted in 2015, enable the Insolvency Service (on the request of a creditor of an insolvent company) to seek a compensatory remedy against a disqualified director for the benefit of the creditor(s). This empowers a creditor to take action where an insolvency officer may be unable, or unwilling, to do so.
High rates of insolvencies look set to continue as the latest quarterly insolvency statistics have been published for England and Wales. Whilst the statistics show a 2% dip from the second quarter of 2023, the number of insolvencies remains 10% higher than in 2022 and shows a return to pre-pandemic levels for compulsory liquidations and administrations. It is particularly striking that the first two quarters of 2023 represent the highest quarterly insolvencies since Q2 2009.