At the end of April 2015 the National Council of the Slovak Republic adopted Act No. 87/2015 Coll., which amends and supplements Act No. 513/1991 Coll. Commercial Code, as amended, and also amends and supplements certain acts (the Amendment). The Amendment will significantly affect the content of the corporate law in Slovakia.
The United Arab Emirates (UAE) appears to be finally in the process of issuing a long-awaited new federal insolvency law. Described by some as a game-changer, the government announced in July that its Cabinet has approved a draft of the new law replacing the old (and largely unused) insolvency regime. The highly anticipated law is now pending the approval and ratification of the Federal National Council and Supreme Council before it receives final approval by Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan, the UAE President.
On August 4, 2015, the Second Circuit weighed in for the first time on the circumstances in which the confirmation of a Chapter 11 plan could strip a secured creditor of its lien. In City of Concord, N.H. v.
Over the last seven months there has been a spate of cases dealing with the relationship between arbitration law and insolvency law.
Winding-up petitions and arbitration clauses
How far do the Bankruptcy Code’s “safe harbor” provisions extend in the commercial mortgage-backed securitization (CMBS) market? Do these safe harbor provisions protect financial institutions that act merely as conduits for CMBS payments? These questions were addressed recently by the Northern District of Illinois District Court, and the court’s decision provides ammunition for CMBS investors in clawback claims brought by a bankruptcy trustee.
Insolvency Statistics
2014 was the first year in which the number of insolvency proceedings filed by Spanish companies fell each month since 2004, the year when the last bankruptcy reforms were enacted. Last year, a total of 6,508 insolvency proceedings were initiated in Spain, a reduction of 26.2% when compared to 2013, which was a record year when 8,823 cases were filed. As a result, in 2014, the streak of consecutive years of increase in the number of insolvency filings ended.
Suppliers of good and services (“trade creditors”) generally have no duty to determine whether their customers are operating an illegal enterprise. However a recent Fifth Circuit opinion presents an unprecedented “claw-back” risk facing trade creditors who unknowingly provide goods and services to a “Ponzi-scheme” enterprise.
The Janvey Opinion
Illinois Governor Rauner presented his turnaround agenda in his “State of the State” address last week and called for, among other things, the state “to extend to municipalities bankruptcy protections.” Mirroring the proposed legislation introduced by Representative Ron Sandack in January, and reported on in an earlier post, Illinois seems positioned to provide municipalities with clear and direct access to Chapter 9 bankruptcy and
The recent English High Court decision in Horton v Henry [2014] EWHC 4209 (Ch)has conflicted with the earlier decision in Raithatha v Williamson [2012] EWCA Civ. 799 and leaves the law unclear as to whether a debtor’s pension forms part of their bankruptcy estate.
A trustee in bankruptcy’s entitlement to seek an income payments order (“IPO”) in respect of a bankrupt’s income is governed by section 310 of the Insolvency Act 1986 (the “IA”). Under section 310(7) of the IA the income of a bankrupt:
The recent reform of the Bankruptcy Act (operated under RD 11/2014 dated September 5, 2014) intended to extend the bankruptcy agreement modifications in favor of the pre-insolvency restructuring and refinancing agreements which were introduced in March 2014.
The reform has a special provision for privileged creditors with warranties subject to specific valuation formulas, to be adjusted to the actual financial value of the guaranteed credit. Any portion of debts that exceed this value will not be considered as privileged, but will be ordinarily classified.