The Federal Court of Australia in Frisken, in the matter of Avant Garde Investments Pty Ltd v Cheema [2020] FCA 98 has considered a dispute between a receiver and the director of the company as to whether the provisional liquidator, Mr Banerjee, should be appointed as the liquidator. 

The director sought the appointment of different liquidators on the basis that Mr Banerjee’s conduct as provisional liquidator was such that a reasonable person might apprehend that he might not be impartial as liquidator. 

The Court of Appeal in 90 Nine Limited v Luxury Rentals NZ Limited [2019] NZCA 424 allowed an appeal from a creditor in respect of an application to liquidate the respondent over a failure to pay a statutory demand.

Jollands v Gull concerns an application by the liquidators of a company to set aside insolvent transactions. The transactions involved funds from the sale of the company's business being paid, via the company's accountant, to three minority shareholders, which then transferred their shares to the respondent shareholders (or in one case, a respondent shareholder's family trust). The respondents' current accounts were in credit at the time.

An appeal by Christchurch property developer, David Henderson, against the High Court decision imposing conditions on his discharge from bankruptcy has been dismissed.

In a comprehensive judgment arising out of the collapse of Lehman Brothers, the UK Supreme Court recently determined the ranking of creditors.

Principally, the Court held that Lehman Brothers International (Europe)'s subordinated debt holders were "at the bottom of the waterfall", behind statutory interest and non-provable debt claimants.

Commercial Factors Ltd v Meltzer concerned a funding agreement between Commercial Factors Ltd (CFL) and the liquidators of Blue Chip New Zealand Ltd (in liq) (Company) by which CFL agreed to lend $67,750 to allow the liquidators to obtain an opinion on the merits of claims against the Company's directors.

If proceedings were commenced, the Company was to pay 2.5% of any proceeds received to CFL.  If the Company did not commence proceedings but otherwise received funds, the agreement stipulated CFL's right to repayment after any liquidator costs.

The English High Court in Re Caledonian Ltd considered whether the business practices of two companies justified the winding up of these companies on a just and equitable basis.

Caledonian Ltd and Caledonian Commodities Ltd (Companies) in concert marketed and sold (among other products) carbon credits, rare earth metals and coloured diamonds (Products) to individual investors.

In the recent High Court case of McKay v Johnson & Smith [2016] NZHC 1691, a liquidator, Geoff Martin Smith, allegedly sent a notice under s 305 of the Companies Act 1993 to the bank that had security over a company in liquidation.  The bank did not respond to the notice and Mr Smith alleged that the bank had lost its security.  The bank maintained it never received the notice.

The Court was satisfied that the notice had been fabricated because:

In Shlosberg v Avonwick Holdings Ltd [2016] EWHC 1001 (Ch), Mr Shloesberg applied for an order restraining Dechert (a firm of solicitors) from acting for Avonwick (the first respondent) and Mr Shloesberg's Trustees in bankruptcy (the third respondents). 

In Stojkov v Kamal [2015] NZHC 2513 a creditor, Mr Stokjov, gave notice to the appointed liquidator, Mr Kamal, for a meeting of creditors to be called.  Mr Kamal did not call the meeting and maintained that the notice was given out of time.  Mr Stokjov reasonably pointed out that this was plainly incorrect.  Mr Kamal, despite clearly being in breach of his duty, still refused to call the meeting and later claimed (quite irrelevantly) that the cost of the meeting was not justified.