Welcome to The Week That Was, a round-up of key events in the financial services sector over the last seven days.
The fifth episode of Season 4 of our podcast, Money Covered - The Month That Was, where the team looks at the Financial Conduct Authority's Vehicle Finance Redress Scheme Consultation, is now available.
To listen to this and all previous episodes, please click here.
Headline development
Summary
Our specialists explain what director disqualification is, the consequences of it and the Insolvency Service’s investigations into a director’s conduct of an insolvent company.
Company directors have legal duties and responsibilities when dealing with the affairs of a company.
On 6 November 2025, winding-up orders were made against Assent Building Control Compliance Limited (“Assent”) and its subsidiaries LB Building Control Limited (“LB”) and
The Insolvency Service has for many decades been the Government department responsible for the oversight of bankruptcies, compulsory insolvencies and, in more serious cases, the disqualification of individual directors.
Building on the successes of the first three conferences, the Insolvency Service held its "Forward Thinking" conference in April 2025. The organisers invited academics and practitioners to submit papers in advance. From the shortlist, the organisers selected a handful of the authors to present their papers at the conference.
The content of the papers, and the debate generated at the conference, will hopefully help the Insolvency Service in terms of selecting and crafting new legislative initiatives, going forward.
Highlights included:
The Insolvency Service (in reply to a letter from R3) has confirmed that it will be reframing its view of the term "creditor". This follows the cases last year of Pindar and Toogood where the court was asked to consider whether a paid secured creditor should have consented to an administration extension and therefore, in the absence of consent, whether the extensions were valid in both cases, the judges confirmed that the consent of paid secured creditors was not required.
We are pleased to share our latest instalment of ML Covered, our monthly round-up of key events relevant to those dealing with Management Liability Policies covering D&O, EPL and PTL-type risks.
Insolvency Service publishes its 2024/25 enforcement actions against directors
The Insolvency Service has published its enforcement outcomes for 2024-25, detailing the enforcement actions taken against directors. The information is not for the entire year but covers the period between April 2024 to December 2024.