It was far from a secret that a veritable smorgasbord of phased changes to insolvency law were coming in on 1 October. The legal and insolvency press has been riddled with it, and frankly the flavours were all a bit predictable. The commentators falling over themselves to ask mundane questions such as “are you ready for…?” and “what will happen now…?” are really just asking “we are really up to date on the new law, aren’t we brilliant?”; of course you are, but you’re not getting any marks for originality.

Key Point

An English Court holds that a rate saving scheme involving liquidations of tenant companies is an abuse of the English insolvency legislation.

The Facts

Key point

The Court is prepared to look at the overall nature of a directors conduct and dissect a complex series of transactions before concluding what (if any) insolvency failings have been committed by a director.

The Facts

Credit Today reports that recent statistics from the Accountant in Bankruptcy (AiB), the government agency that administers the insolvency regime in Scotland, have revealed that:

It cannot have escaped the attention of anyone involved in the aviation finance industry that the UK is currently in the process of ratifying the Cape Town Convention (being the Convention on International Interests in Mobile Equipment and related Protocol on Matters Specific to Aircraft Equipment). Here, we will look at that ratification process and consider the principal legal and practical implications for our clients.

Ratification Process

On 1 October 2015, several changes to UK insolvency legislation are coming into force. Insolvency practitioners and stakeholders should take note of the following key amendments to make sure they are up to date with these changes.

The English High Court has again considered whether by itself the choice of English law and court jurisdiction in legal documentation establishes a “sufficient connection” with England to enable a foreign company to avail itself of an English scheme of arrangement.

Background

Introduction

In The STX Mumbai [2015] SGCA 35, a five-member Court of Appeal sat to hear an admiralty case for the first time. The case involved a novel issue of an anticipatory breach of an executed contract. The significance of this case is two-fold: under what circumstances may legal action be brought before the credit period expires and also, whether insolvency of a parent company has an impact on its subsidiary, possibly disregarding the corporate veils.

In Mark Howell v Lerwick Commercial Mortgage Corporation Limited, the High Court has held that statutory demands will not necessarily be set aside if the undisputed debt is less than £750, where there other debts which would take the cumulative total over this limit.

Facts

Mr Howell obtained finance from Lerwick in 2010 to develop a property and paid £2,750 to Lerwick to obtain a valuation. Mr Howell claimed that the valuation provided was sub-standard, and as a result there were delays in the development and its subsequent sale.

A number of headlines following a recent high-profile professional negligence case suggest that there is no duty on a purchaser’s conveyancer to check a seller’s solvency. It is, of course, part of the normal pre-contract searches and enquiries to check on the solvency of the seller, and in the majority of cases, the property solicitor will become aware of the seller’s bankruptcy, as a notice or restriction on the title will show up on the official search of the registered title.  

Solvent