On 10 December 2010, the High Court gave judgment in a joint application by the administrators of certain companies in the Nortel and Lehman estates for directions on the status of any financial support direction (FSD) or contribution notice (CN) issued to the companies in administration or any subsequent liquidation (Bloom & Others v. The Pensions Regulator (Nortel, Re) [2010] EWHC 3010 (Ch)).

In brief

Courts have recently approved a number of means by which external administrators can realise value from insolvent agricultural managed investment schemes and deal with the rights of growers and sponsor creditors:

The retail sector and its suppliers operate at the sharp end of the economy and feel the impact of tighter consumer spending with more immediacy than most other sectors.

The Financial Reporting Council (FRC) and institutional bodies have published the following guidance in relation to corporate governance and directors' remuneration in the last few months.

The Pensions Regulator announced this week that it will not  pursue action to impose a Financial Support Direction against US company, Chemtura Corporation and members of its group after a funding settlement, involving the payment of expedited contributions to the pension scheme of its UK subsidiary, was reached with the scheme's trustees.

In September 2009 we reported on the first instance decision in Butters and ors v BBC Worldwide Ltd and ors, accessible here in which the Court held that contractual provisions in a joint venture agreement taken together with termination provisions in a licence of IP rights were void since the effect of those provisions on insolvency was to deprive creditors' access to assets and therefore contrary

Following the House of Lords' decision in Melville Dundas in April, the TCC has now decided in the case of Pierce Design v Johnston on 17 July that the case has a wide application - but unreasonable failure to pay may still be penalised.

The decision of the House of Lords in Melville Dundas in April resolved a tension between the payment provisions of the Housing Grants, Construction and Regeneration Act 1996 ("the Act") and contractual clauses applying to payments after termination of building contracts.

In a judgment only recently published via the Building Law Reports,  the High Court has ruled that a winding up procedure applicable to companies should not be used where there is a triable issue as to the validity of an adjudicator’s decision relied on as evidence of a company being unable to pay its debts: Towsey v. Highgrove [2012] EWHC 2644 (Chancery Division).

Background

The Sinclair v Versailles1 decision has extinguished any prospect that a victim of a fraud has a proprietary claim to a fraudster’s secret profits. It also offers significant comfort to banks, insolvency practitioners and other potential recipients of trust funds by setting a high bar for whether a recipient person is “on notice” of a proprietary claim to those funds.

The transition from 2009 to 2010 sees some significant legislative chapters closing, notably the Companies Act 2006, Rome I and II, the Banking Act 2009 and the Lisbon Treaty.