The Supreme Court of Canada's ("SCC") recent decision in Peace River Hydro Partners v.
Insolvency practitioners and creditors facing voidable transaction claims will need to reassess the value of any potential or threatened unfair preference claims or other voidable transaction claims, following two important insolvency decisions in the High Court yesterday (Metal Manufactures Pty Limited v Morton [2023] HCA 1 (Metal Manufactures); Bryant v Badenoch Integrated Logging Pty Ltd [2023] HCA 2 (Badenoch).
It held that:
During the lifetime of a company some of the most difficult problems that a director faces are encountered if the company is in financial difficulty: not yet unable to pay its bills and insolvent but with a possibility that it may get to that position. At that stage the decisions made by a director may affect not only the survival and future of the company but also the director's own position.
Summary and comment
The Bankruptcy (Netting, Contractual Subordination and Non-petition Provisions) (Jersey) Law 2005 (the Netting Law) is a short law, expressed in seven articles, which gives statutory confirmation that netting, contractual subordination and non-petition provisions in agreements are enforceable in accordance with their terms before and after bankruptcy.
In a historical first female majority High Court Judgment, Bryant v Badenoch Integrated Logging Pty Ltd[1]saw all seven Judges unanimously uphold the decision to abolish the Peak Indebtedness Rule, and set in place the starting point for calculation of “all transactions” in a “running account”.
The phrase “projected disposable income” is a plan confirmation standard in all reorganization chapters of the Bankruptcy Code for individuals and businesses:
In Short
The Situation: Directors in England and Wales owe duties to the companies to which they are appointed (and may face personal liability for breaching such duties). Although the Companies Act 2006 obliges directors to maximise value for a company's shareholders, case law has suggested that directors should act in the interests of a company's creditors if a company becomes distressed.
ICC Judge Barber’s judgment in the case of Purkiss v Kennedy & ors (Re Ethos Solutions Ltd) [2022] EWHC 3098 (Ch) deals with a complex and late application for joinder and to re-amend proceedings. It was handed down following a four day hearing and weighs in at over 200 paragraphs, facts indicative of the unusual nature of the application.
Since the introduction of the Corporate Insolvency and Governance Act 2020 (CIGA) and the creation of the new Part 26A restructuring plan procedure, questions have been raised about whether the cost of using such a procedure would restrict its use to larger, better capitalised companies.