A commercial landlord should never assume that, if his tenant goes into administration or liquidation, he will not be able to obtain rent from the administrator or liquidator in respect of the period following appointment of the administrator or liquidator.

In the current economic climate, disputes, particularly payment disputes, are rife. Consider the following scenario. You arrive at work early on Monday morning, to discover that the supplier with whom you have been having a long-running but relatively minor dispute over payment, has secured a winding up order against your company and appointment of a liquidator from the court. Or, equally distressing, a sheriff officer appears at your door with another form of court order in his hand - an interdict - stopping you from carrying out a key part of your business activities.

In May 2009, the Treasury published a discussion paper entitled Developing effective resolution arrangements for investment banks. In this discussion paper the Treasury set out its initial thinking on the steps necessary to improve the regime around the failure of investment firms.

Nortel Networks UK Limited (the company) was a tenant under two leases. The company went into administration. The administrators occupied a small proportion of each of the premises to enable them to carry out the administration. Under the terms of both leases rent was payable quarterly in advance.

The landlord applied to the court for an order directing the administrators to pay the rent as an expense of the administration.

On January 22nd, the FDIC and the Bank of England announced their agreement to a memorandum of understanding, expanding their cooperation when they act as resolution authorities in resolving troubled deposit-taking financial institutions with activities in the United States and United Kingdom. FDIC Press Release.

In September 2009 we reported on the first instance decision in Butters and ors v BBC Worldwide Ltd and ors, accessible here in which the Court held that contractual provisions in a joint venture agreement taken together with termination provisions in a licence of IP rights were void since the effect of those provisions on insolvency was to deprive creditors' access to assets and therefore contrary

The US Bankruptcy Court has issued a declaratory judgment that the relevant clause flipping priority from the swap counterparty to the noteholders constituted an ipso facto provision and was therefore unenforceable – a judgment that produces a different result under US law to that established by the Court of Appeal in the Perpetual Trustee case from November 2009.

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.

One of the more interesting recent appointments in which MacRoberts have been acting relates to the administration of Livingston Football Club Limited ("Livingston") where we acted for Donnie McGruther of Mazars. Donnie was interim manager and subsequently administrator of Livingston.