The Employment (Collective Redundancies and Miscellaneous Provisions) Act 2024 (the “Employment Act”) was signed into law on 9 May 2024 albeit the provisions have not yet commenced. The General Scheme of Companies (Corporate Governance, Enforcement and Regulatory Provisions) Bill 2024 (the “Companies Bill”) was published in March this year and is expected to be enacted later this year. Both make significant changes to the restructuring and insolvency regime. We will continue to keep you apprised of developments regarding the commencement of the Act.

When does this question tend to arise?

Fund sponsors continue to face a challenging fundraising market and many are sensitive to increasing investor demand for liquidity. Higher interest rates and public market dislocation continue to make capital-raising difficult, while decreased fund distributions are limiting capital available for new commitments, leading investors to prioritize liquidity and invest cautiously.

It is impossible to reflect on the current state of the U.S. economy without recognizing how off the mark recession calls have been since 2022. It was only a year ago that two-thirds of economists regularly polled by Bloomberg expected a U.S. recession within a year. Even today that percentage is still a lofty 30%, though scant evidence of an impending downturn is found in macroeconomic data or in plain sight, notwithstanding the weaker-than-expected advance GDP report for 1Q24. It’s not just economists who have been errant in this call.

Harbour Front Limited v The Official Receiver and Trustee of the Property of Leung Yat Tung [2024] HKCFI 1203 provides an interesting illustration of how the ‘prevention principle’ may be applied in an unusual scenario of a claim for contractual interests under a settlement agreement. Whilst contractual provisions are unlikely to provide for any express constraint on a claim for contractual interests, the judgment offers valuable insight into how such a claim may nonetheless be subject to limitation.

The Court of King’s Bench of Alberta (the Court) recently revisited the stringent boundaries on the types of claims that can be brought against court-appointed officers. The decision in North v Davison, 2024 ABKB 242 (the Decision) highlighted the protective measures that courts employ to safeguard the integrity and function of receivership proceedings against unfounded or speculative claims. In the Decision, the Court struck down a counterclaim against Ernst & Young Inc.

In a previous

The Hong Kong Court of Appeal has finally laid to rest the vexed issue of whether an arbitration agreement or a winding-up petition should take precedence in an insolvency situation. In two parallel decisions, the Court of Appeal ruled that an arbitration agreement should be treated in the same way as an exclusive jurisdiction clause and that the principle should be given a wide interpretation.

Nachfolgend wird die Einordnung der Umsatzsteuer in der Insolvenz als Masse- oder Insolvenzforderung und die Auswirkung auf die Gläubigerbefriedigung erläutert.

In the Endoceutics case[1], the Superior Court recently clarified the application of section 32 of the Companies’ Creditors Arrangement Act