Welcome to the results of our third annual Pensions in Restructuring Survey.

This year's survey gathers views on the issues with pensions in corporate restructuring, with a particular focus on the points arising from the Department for Work and Pensions' recent white paper, "Protecting Defined Benefit Pension Schemes".

Key Points

• Insurers had no priority rights to collect premiums over the proceeds of a successful action they had insured, as a result of a drafting error.

• The High Court affirmed the general rule that, where a party has contracted for an unsecured right only, the court will not elevate it to a secured status.

The Facts 

Key point

• In certain circumstances the court will look to parallel statutory provisions where existing applicable statute does not accommodate the situation, as long as the latter is not offended, expanded or altered by doing so.

The facts

This application for directions was brought by the administrators of Lehman Brothers Europe Ltd (the “Company”) on:

An increasing body of English case law has recognised cryptocurrencies as a form of property giving rise to the possibility of insolvency clawback claims involving cryptoassets.

Recent developments

In John Doyle Construction v Erith Contractors, the Court of Appeal has further considered the interrelation of insolvency and adjudication, providing guidance on the circumstances in which an adjudication award might be enforceable by a company in liquidation.

The key takeaways

Jurisdiction

Insolvency practitioners and buyers of distressed assets beware: although the National Security and Investment Act 2021 (NSI Act) will come into effect in the UK on 4 January 2022, it has retrospective power to examine transactions from 12 November 2020.

Mandatory notification

The High Court recently considered whether a creditor can be a victim to, and obtain relief for, a transaction which is reversed before the claim is even brought and the creditor is put back to the position they were in before the transaction took place.

Timeline

The German Federal Court of Justice (BGH) has ruled that a limited partner is not liable for debts incumbent on the insolvency estate incurred by an administrator in insolvency proceedings.

However, it was unclear who would be liable for debts incumbent on the insolvency estate pursuant to section 55(4) of the German Insolvency Act (the Act) incurred in preliminary insolvency proceedings. A recent BGH ruling on 28 January 2021 (IX ZR 54/20) now provides clarity.

Case summary

In Uralkali v Rowley and another [2020] EWHC 3442 (Ch) – a UK High Court case relating to the administration of a Formula 1 racing team – an unsuccessful bidder for the company's business and assets sued the administrators, arguing that the bid process had been negligently misrepresented and conducted.

The court found that the administrators did not owe a duty of care to the disappointed bidder. It rejected the claimant's criticisms of the company’s sale process and determined that the administrators had conducted it "fairly and properly" and were not, in fact, negligent.

The simplified proceedings for the approval of an arrangement (postępowanie o zatwierdzenie układu) is the newest restructuring procedure available under Polish law.

It was introduced to the Polish legal system by the so-called Shield 4.0 enactment (ie Act of 19 June 2020, Journal of Laws of 2020, item 1086).

Here's a round-up of the key information you need to know about Poland's new simplified restructuring procedure.

How do the simplified proceedings work?