The English Court has devised a new route to impose liability on a company's UBO who strips assets from the company leaving creditors to claim in its insolvency. UBOs feeling comfortable about the security of their corporate veil after the Supreme Court’s decision in Prest^[1], will need to look carefully at this recent decision, which may be applied in other jurisdictions with corporate laws based on English law, such as BVI and Cyprus.

The Court of Appeal’s ruling in Neumans LLP v Andrew Andronikou & Ors [2013] EWCA Civ 916 has provided some useful guidance to insolvency practitioners on the courts’ approach to administration and liquidation expenses.

Pre-match warm up

On 24 July 2013, the Supreme Court handed down its long-awaited judgment in the Nortel/Lehman case on where a contribution notice (CN) or financial support direction (FSD) issued by the Pensions Regulator (TPR) on a company that is already in insolvency proceedings (eg administration) ranks in the order of priority of payment.

On 24 July 2013, in BESTrustees v Kaupthing, Singer & Friedlander [2013] EWHC 2407 (Ch) the High Court ruled in favour of an underfunded scheme, whose insolvent sponsor hoped to offset £2m in payments against its outstanding debt.

The High Court has confirmed that all rights relating to the control of data belonging to, or being controlled by, a company at the time it entered into liquidation remain vested in the company at and following its liquidation. Liquidators are therefore not personally liable for compliance with the Data Protection Act 1998 in respect of this data as they will be viewed as agents acting for the company rather than as 'data controllers'.

In his judgment handed down on 18 October1 Popplewell J took the opportunity to clarify the law
regarding payments by a company to third parties which may or may not have been suspicious and
where the company may or may not have been insolvent at the time. He looked long and hard at the
state of knowledge necessary to ground liability, at defences available to directors and whether the
court could relieve liability for innocent breaches.

Mr. Justice Popplewell recently dismissed the lawsuit filed by liquidators of Madoff Securities International Ltd after a lengthy trial in the High Court through which they were seeking to recover around $50 million. The ruling exonerated the UK defendants including former Bank Medici AG Chairwoman Sonja Kohn and the Directors of Bernard Madoff’s European organisation, including his children Mark and Andrew.

Several blogs ago, I asked whether a party could still argue that the Notified Sum (as defined in the Housing Grants Construction Regeneration Act 1996, as amended by the Local Democracy, Economic Development and Construction Act 2009 - the Act) was not payable even in the absence of a Pay Less Notice.  To continue the theme of Pay Less Notices and their absence, what about the interplay between construction law and insolvency law - in the absence of a Pay Less Notice, and faced with a petition to the court to wind them up, could a party defend itself by saying that the so-called 'debt

According to The Times (25 October 2013) the British Property Federation has advised landlords to take larger rent deposits to reduce losses caused by the insolvency of a tenant.

BNY Corporate trustee Services Ltd & Ors v Neuberger[2013]UKSC 28

The UK Supreme Court in BNY Corporate trustee Services Ltd & Ors v Neuberger clarified the ambit of the “cash–flow insolvency” test under section 123 (1)(e) of the English Insolvency Act 1986 ("the "Insolvency Act") and the "balance-sheet insolvency" test under section 123(2) of the Insolvency Act.