This Act received Royal Assent in July 2007 but no date for implementation has been published yet.

In addition to the provisions contained in this Act aimed at improving the working of the tribunals system and increasing judicial diversity, are several sections that will be of interest to financiers and insolvency professionals: 

Supreme Court Judgment dated 10 March 2016 (STS 151/2016)

The judgment of the Supreme Court analyses the objective scope of extension of the liability for obligations and debts for which, as appropriate, the director of a company should be liable and, more specifically, the scope of "the corporate obligations subsequent to the occurrence of the legal ground for dissolution".

Is a debtor required to pay default rate interest when it reinstates a loan under a plan of reorganization? According to a recent Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals decision, In re Sagamore Partners, Ltd., 2015 U.S. App. LEXIS 15382 (Aug. 31, 2015), the answer depends upon the underlying loan documents and applicable non-bankruptcy law.

As they say, what one hand giveth, the other hand taketh. In its recent decision in In re MPM Silicones, LLC, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit addressed make-whole premiums and cramdown rates of interest (among other issues not addressed here), issuing rulings that will impact creditors and debtors alike.

In the recent case of BTI 2014 LLC v Sequana SA & others [2016] EWHC 1686, the High Court has held for the first time that a dividend can be challenged as a transaction entered into at an undervalue within the meaning of section 423(1) of the Insolvency Act 1986 (the “IA”).

The Facts

The facts of the case are long and complex but for present purposes the pertinent facts are as follows.

Arjo Wiggins Appleton Limited (now Windward Prospects Limited) (“AWA”) was a wholly owned subsidiary of Sequana SA (“SSA”).

A recent decision of the Slovak Courts suggest that if main proceedings have been opened in one member state and the debtor has assets in Slovakia, the insolvency practitioner in the main proceedings must act quickly and sell those assets before secondary proceedings are opened in Slovakia, otherwise he runs the risk of losing the assets to the secondary estate. Legal title to the assets must have passed to the buyer before the secondary proceedings are opened; it is not enough just for contracts to have been exchanged.

We admit, discovery disputes rarely make for titillating blog posts. But a letter ruling issued towards the end of last year by Judge Shannon in Longview Power, LLC et al. v. First American Title Insurance Co. recently caught our eye.

Although likely not the intent of In re Siag Aerisyn, LLC, a recent decision from the United States Bankruptcy Court for the Eastern District of Tennessee Southern Division, some might argue that the opinion serves as a how-to guide for masking a capital contribution by an affiliate as a loan constituting bona fide debt.

In lengthy insolvency proceedings, interest accrued on existing claims during the “post-filing” period can represent a substantial portion of the debtor’s estate.

This article has been contributed to the blog by Caitlin Fell and Justine Erickson. Caitlin Fell is an associate in the insolvency and restructuring group of Osler, Hoskin & Harcourt LLP and Justine Erickson is a summer student at Osler, Hoskin & Harcourt LLP.