I. Introduction Readers may be familiar with the use in the UK of Schemes of Arrangement to achieve closure of insurance and reinsurance business.

• Decision will be welcomed by insurers

The Scottish Appeal Court has allowed the appeal by Scottish Lion Insurance against the judgment of Lord Glennie on whether it would ever be fair for a court to sanction a solvent scheme in the face of creditor opposition, says City law firm Reynolds Porter Chamberlain LLP (RPC).

It is likely that changes to the employer debt regulations (the so-called "section 75 debt" regime) will come into force on 6 April. These will prevent a debt from arising on certain internal group restructurings where there is no weakening of the employer covenant. However, the regulations are highly prescriptive and are, therefore, less attractive as a means of dealing with section 75 debts when compared to apportionment or withdrawal arrangements.

The FSA has published a statement that provides an update on The Freedom SIPP Limited - In Liquidation.

PricewaterhouseCoopers, liquidators of the Freedom SIPP Limited has appointed an agent to wind up the Freedom SIPP Scheme.

View Update on The Freedom SIPP Limited - In Liquidation, 29 January 2010  

For nearly a year, the Scottish Lion Insurance Company, Limited ( “Scottish Lion”), an insurance company that wrote coverage in the London insurance market, has been litigating with its creditors (policyholders), including many U.S. creditors, to permit it to enter into what is known under U.K. law as a solvent scheme of arrangement. A Scottish appellate court recently ruled in favor of Scottish Lion on a preliminary question of whether such a scheme could be sanctioned under U.K. law despite opposition from a minority of U.S.

The SFO has announced that managing director and shareholder of Alta Gas Plc, Peter Brian Bradley, has been ordered to pay £1 million compensation to victims following confiscation proceedings on 26 January 2010. In 2001, Alta Gas Plc went into administrative receivership which resulted in the receivers of the company discovering a sophisticated system of false accounts that enhanced the profitability of the company.

In the case of In the matter of Construction Confederation and In the matter of the Insolvency Act 1986 [2009] EWHC 3551 (Ch), the trustees of the Construction Confederation Staff Pension Scheme have obtained an order for winding up of the sponsoring employer, an unincorporated association.

Christmas came early for landlords last year when the High Court handed down its decision in this case. The court had to consider the circumstances in which a tenant's administrators are obliged to pay rent as an expense of the administration, thereby giving the landlord priority over other unsecured creditors.

In the current economic climate, landlords are having to deal more frequently with tenants who are in administration. Where the administrators of the tenant are using the property for the purposes of the administration, the moratorium on forfeiture and irritancy proceedings that applies in administrations means that the landlords are unlikely to be able to recover the property in order to relet it.

An agreement with a company has gone into arrears. The vehicles may or may not have been sold. The company has placed itself into voluntary liquidation. Can the finance company take steps to protect itself if it suspects that there has been mismanagement or misappropriation of funds within the company? Yes. Where "prejudice" will be suffered by a creditor, the court can order a compulsory liquidation, where the activities of the company will be more vigorously examined than might otherwise be the case with a voluntary liquidation.