In brief
In Avanti Communications Ltd [2023] EWHC 940 (Ch), the English court revisited the vexed issue of fixed and floating charges. Notably, it is the first significant case since the landmark decision in Re Spectrum Plus Ltd [2005] UKHL 41 to do so.
The distinction between fixed and floating charges is economically important and affects the recoveries a secured creditor may expect to receive in an insolvent liquidation of the security provider.
What makes a charge a fixed or floating security and why is this distinction important? The characteristics of a floating charge are long-established, but how does a lender ensure that valuable capital assets, i.e. investment properties, stocks, and bonds, of a borrowing company, are subject to valid fixed charge security?
The High Court has held that certain assets sold by a company around the time of its administration were subject to a fixed charge rather than a floating charge and as such, the sale proceeds were not to be distributed to preferential creditors or unsecured creditors: Avanti Communications Ltd, Re [2023] EWHC 940 (Ch).
In a decision likely to be welcomed by both debtors and lenders, the High Court has held that a charge granted by Avanti Communications Limited (“Avanti”) was properly characterised as a fixed charge (rather than a floating charge) notwithstanding that the chargor retained an element of control over the charged assets. A key plank of the decision was that the relevant assets were not ‘fluctuating assets’ or ‘stock in trade’ that the chargor might be expected to dispose of in the ordinary course of its business.
The administrators of Avanti Communications Limited (the “Company”) sought directions from the High Court as to whether purported fixed charges in favour of the secured lenders to the satellite operating business should be recharacterised as floating charges (In the matter of Avanti Communications Limited (In administration) [2023] EWHC 940 (Ch)).
Summary of decision
In brief
In Avanti Communications Ltd [2023] EWHC 940 (Ch), the English court revisited the vexed issue of fixed and floating charges. Notably, it is the first significant case since the landmark decision in Re Spectrum Plus Ltd [2005] UKHL 41 to do so.
The distinction between fixed and floating charges is economically important and affects the recoveries a secured creditor may expect to receive in an insolvent liquidation of the security provider.
The High Court has held that certain assets sold by a company around the time of its administration were subject to a fixed charge rather than a floating charge and as such, the sale proceeds were not to be distributed to preferential creditors or unsecured creditors: Avanti Communications Ltd, Re [2023] EWHC 940 (Ch).
In a decision likely to be welcomed by both debtors and lenders, the High Court has held that a charge granted by Avanti Communications Limited (“Avanti”) was properly characterised as a fixed charge (rather than a floating charge) notwithstanding that the chargor retained an element of control over the charged assets. A key plank of the decision was that the relevant assets were not ‘fluctuating assets’ or ‘stock in trade’ that the chargor might be expected to dispose of in the ordinary course of its business.