In Short
The Situation: Directors in England and Wales owe duties to the companies to which they are appointed (and may face personal liability for breaching such duties). Although the Companies Act 2006 obliges directors to maximise value for a company's shareholders, case law has suggested that directors should act in the interests of a company's creditors if a company becomes distressed.
The German Federal Court (BGH) has confirmed that section 166 of the German Insolvency Code (InsO) does not provide the administrator with a right to use or realise secured assets for the benefit of the insolvency estate other than movable assets or claims assigned by way of security.
Background
Under section 166 InsO an insolvency administrator may realise a movable asset in which a right to separate satisfaction exists if it is in the administrator's possession. The same applies to claims assigned by way of security.
The High Court has clarified the grounds for challenging a CVA for guarantee creditors.
Background
Mizen Design/Build Ltd's (Mizen) directors proposed a CVA stating that this would lead to a better result for unsecured creditors than the likely alternative, administration.
The CVA compromised guarantee creditors' ability both to bring a claim against Mizen and to call upon their performance guarantees against Mizen's parent company (the Parent Guarantor).
Under German law, company directors have a statutory duty to file for insolvency once the company has become insolvent or over-indebted. Company directors can be held personally liable for any payments they make after that point of time unless they prove that they exercised reasonable care, skill and diligence. After the German Federal Court of Justice (Bundesgerichtshof) clarified that standard terms and conditions of German D&O insurance contracts cover this directors’ liability, many D&O insurers have tried to find new ways to avoid their coverage.
After a turbulent weekend, the news on Monday morning that HSBC had acquired Silicon Valley Bank UK (SVB UK) caused the UK tech community to breathe a huge sigh of relief.
It was also a very different outcome to the one that seemed destined on Friday when the Bank of England announced it intended to put SVB UK into a bank insolvency procedure.
The United Kingdom Supreme Court has just released an important insolvency judgment in BTI 2014 LLC v Sequana SA [2022] UKSC 25 (Sequana), which concerns when and the extent to which directors of a company must consider the interests of creditors.
The United Kingdom Supreme Court has just released an important insolvency judgment in BTI 2014 LLC v Sequana SA [2022] UKSC 25 (Sequana), which concerns when and the extent to which directors of a company must consider the interests of creditors.
In the recent decision of Paragon Offshore, No. 16-10386 (CSS), 2021 (Bankr. D. Del. June 28, 2021), the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the District of Delaware (the court) addressed the issue of whether the Office of the United States Trustee (OUST) could collect its quarterly fees against assets that were previously transferred to a litigation trust (the litigation trust) free and clear of any and all claims, liens and other encumbrances pursuant to a confirmed plan of liquidation.
Dans le cadre de l’affaire Bloom Lake relative à la Loi sur les arrangements avec les créanciers des compagnies (la « Lacc »), la Cour supérieure du Québec prononce un jugement au sujet de l'élargissement des pouvoirs du contrôleur dans un contexte où un créancier refusait de produire la documentation demandée par les débitrices.
Of general interest is the appeal in the case of Horton v Henry, on which we reported in our January 2015 update. In Horton, the High Court declined to follow a previous ruling, and decided that a bankrupt could not be compelled to access his pension savings to pay off creditors.