DWP consults on amendments to the employer-debt regulations

Background

The High Court (Mr Justice Trower) today gave its judgment sanctioning Amigo’s ‘New Business Scheme’. A team of us at Freshfields were pleased to help Amigo with this. Here we outline the technical innovations that, despite significant legal and regulatory uncertainty, delivered the best available outcome for Amigo’s redress creditors and the prospect of Amigo lending again for the benefit of those creditors and future customers. We also identify two approaches that addressed the practical challenge of implementing a complex legal process with retail creditors.

On 28 June 2021, the UK High Court declined to sanction Hurricane Energy Plc’s restructuring plan. This was the first time a restructuring plan seeking to achieve a debt-for-equity swap against the wishes of existing shareholders had come before the court.

Background

The Corporate Insolvency and Governance Act 2020 (the Act) introduced significant changes to insolvency law, including permitting companies to propose a “restructuring plan”. The restructuring plan offers a flexible option for companies that sponsor defined benefit pension schemes to compromise their obligations to creditors and, potentially, to the pension scheme itself.

The Abu Dhabi Global Market (ADGM)continues to enhance its legislative framework after recently publishing its fourth round of amendments to the ADGM Insolvency Regulations 2015.

As part of the latest round of amendments, the ADGM has introduced a new chapter dealing with priority funding (PDF), similar to US Chapter 11 style debtor-in-possession (DIP) funding.

In the recent decision of Michael J Lonsdale (Electrical) Limited v Bresco Electrical Services Limited (In Liquidation) [2018] EWHC 2043 (TCC), Fraser J found that parties cannot resolve their disputes by means of adjudication where a company in liquidation and its counterparty both claim a pre-liquidation entitlement to payment of money by the other.

On 24 July 2013, the Supreme Court handed down its long-awaited judgment in the Nortel/Lehman case on where a contribution notice (CN) or financial support direction (FSD) issued by the Pensions Regulator (TPR) on a company that is already in insolvency proceedings (eg administration) ranks in the order of priority of payment.

A section 75 debt is a debt due from an employer in a multi-employer defined benefit pension scheme to the trustees of the scheme.

The High Court in London has decided that a scheme of arrangement under the UK Companies Act 2006 cannot be used by the administration of Lehman Brothers International (Europe) (LBIE) to facilitate the return of client assets to LBIE clients.