INTRODUCTION
Many practitioners may not think of stamp duty as a particular risk when taking on a liquidation or a receivership and there is limited published guidance on the topic. Against a background of an increasing number of business failures including companies operating in property development it is likely that liquidators and receivers will be faced with stamp duty issues on a more frequent basis. The purpose of this article is to identify some areas where practitioners may encounter stamp duty issues.
PROOF OF TITLE
The first anniversary of the credit crunch passed in recent weeks and the economic turbulence in this country has been reflected in the sharp increase in the number of insolvencies over the past 12 months.
The Isle of Man Appeal Court (the Staff of Government Division) judgment in Spirit ofMontpelier v Lombard Manx[2015] has addressed important issues in relation to company and insolvency laws and the powers of judges to create and develop principles of common law in order to serve the interests of justice.
In Prest v Petrodel Resources Limited (in Liquidation)(1) the Manx court recently confirmed that where security for costs orders is appropriate, the amount ordered will not always be restricted to a sum representing the extra costs incurred in enforcing an order in the jurisdiction in which the claimant is resident or in which assets are situated.
The economic turbulence stirred up by our most recent credit crunch has thrown up a myriad of difficult legal questions for financiers everywhere. This anxious economic environment which has restrained the financial independence of many Irish companies from their financiers is fraught with legal conundrums.
Workout Agreements
Under the Companies Acts, the liquidator of every insolvent company is obliged to bring a court application to have the insolvent company’s directors restricted from acting as director or secretary of any other company for a period of five years unless that other company has a paid-up share capital of approximately €63,500. The relevant provision of the Companies Acts (Section 150) applies to any person who was a director of the insolvent company either at the date of or within 12 months of the start of the company’s winding-up. Section 150 also applies to shadow directors.
* This article was first published by INSOL International on April 17, 2015.
Insolvency proceedings are an integral part of business-commercial activities, in circumstances whereby a person or corporation might need to institute proceedings to rehabilitate its business activities or even to liquidate the company.
Insolvency reflects a factual situation in which a debtor (person or corporation) encounters economic and cash flow difficulties to the extent that the debtor is incapable of paying its debts to creditors on time.
I. Introduction
Italy has replaced its Bankruptcy Act of 1942 with a comprehensive reform, the process for which started two years ago. On 19 October 2017, Parliament passed Law No. 155 of 2017 delegating the Government to adopt, within the next 12 months, a comprehensive reform of the rules governing financial crises and insolvency procedures. On 10 January 2019, the Government approved Legislative Decree No. 14 of 2019, captioned “Code for Distress and Insolvency” (Codice della Crisi d’Impresa e dell’Insovenza—the “Code”).
With the decision No. 1649 of 19 September 2017 the Court of Appeals of Catania followed the interpretation according to which a spin-off is not subject to the avoiding powers of a bankruptcy receiver
The case