The High Court has ruled that liquidators of lessors can disclaim leases, thus terminating the leasehold interests of tenants.

However, yesterday's High Court decision in Willmott Growers Group Inc. v Willmott Forests Limited (Receivers and Managers Appointed) (In Liquidation) [2013] HCA 51 leaves open another issue: do liquidators need to get Court approval before exercising this power, and, if so, how easy or difficult would it be to get that approval?

Key Points

A creditor with assets in England should refrain from involvement in a foreign insolvency proceeding if it is at risk of being sued in the foreign court.

If you’re pursuing assets in England relevant to a non-European bankruptcy or insolvency, you can’t rely on a (default) foreign judgment and must instead bring fresh proceedings in the English courts

The proposed scaling back of directors' liability provisions is good news for insolvency practitioners.

In good news for insolvency practitioners, the NSW Government formally adopted the Council of Australian Governments guidelines on "Personal Liability for Corporate Fault" as NSW policy on 31 July 2012 .

What are the "Personal Liability for Corporate Fault" guidelines?

Although the Australian voluntary administration regime served as the model for the UK administration system, one notable difference has emerged between the two systems: pre-packs.

Pre-packs – the use of a statutory insolvency regime to implement a pre-agreed debt / corporate restructuring – have not really taken off in Australia. In the UK, of course, they form a significant proportion of all administrations.

Few now remember that Chapter 5C of the Corporations Act can trace its origins to the afternoon of 23 July 1991. For the past year, the unlisted property trust industry had been in meltdown. The value of the assets held by the industry had fallen over 20%. Investors were scrambling to get out, and collapses seemed imminent.

The Supreme Court decides how client moneys are to be allocated in the Lehman estate, which has far-reaching implications for distributions in other financial collapses.

The Supreme Court has recently handed down a decision in a contentious and difficult application in the Lehman administration, a decision which fundamentally affects the allocation of client moneys in the Lehman estate.

The Court of Appeal handed down its judgment on 14 October 2011 unanimously upholding the first instance decision that a Financial Support Direction (FSD) issued by the Pensions Regulator to an entity after it has commenced insolvency proceedings will rank as an expense of the administration, therefore affording it super-priority over floating charge holders and other unsecured creditors. This decisions has significant implications for lenders to groups with UK defined benefit pension plans if any of their security is taken as a floating charge.

There are essentially three types of insolvency proceeding: liquidation, receivership and administration. Liquidators realise and distribute a company’s assets before dissolving the company. Receivers usually realise certain secured assets to repay certain debts, before appointing a liquidator. However, an administrator’s first objective is to rescue the company as a going concern. It is only if this is not practicable that the administrator can realise and distribute a company’s assets.

Summary

The High Court recently handed down the judgment in Ralls Builders Ltd (In Liquidation), Re [2016] EWHC 1812 (Ch). It was held that liquidators and administrators are not able to recover their own costs and expenses of investigating a wrongful trading claim from the directors of a company, even following a finding of wrongful trading under section 214 Insolvency Act 1986.

Background