In our recent update on AGMs, we mentioned that the Government is due to pass legislation giving companies increased flexibility for holding Annual General Meetings, amongst other measures to help businesses through the COVID-19 situation.
Following the Government's announcement in March that the hotly anticipated changes to the UK's insolvency regime would be rushed through Parliament with further, temporary, provisions to mitigate the impact of COVID-19, insolvency practitioners and business professionals alike have been awaiting further clarity on what the Business Secretary's comments mean for businesses both in the current climate and more generally.
On Wednesday 20 May, the Government published the highly anticipated Corporate Insolvency and Governance Bill (the “CIGB”). It legislates for the landmark changes to the UK’s corporate insolvency regime and the temporary suspension of the statutory provisions on wrongful trading announced by the Business Secretary on 28 March 2020 (see Weil’s European Restructuring Watch update of 30 March 2020).
The Corporate Insolvency and Governance Bill (the “Bill”) has been laid before the UK Parliament today, Wednesday 20 May 2020.
The Bill, if passed, will implement some significant changes to UK insolvency law and at the same time effect a range of temporary measures to assist with corporate governance during the Covid-19 situation.
Moratorium for protection from creditors
In Dhillon v Barclays Bank plc [2020] EWCA Civ 619, Mrs Dhillon sought rectification of the Land Register to remove a charge granted following a fraudulent transfer. The property was now worth over a million-pounds. The sum secured by the charge was over £600,000.
The sprawling and complex cross-border fraud litigation being pursued by the Joint Liquidators (Paul Atkinson and Glyn Mummery of FRP Advisory) of Grosvenor Property Developers Ltd (‘the Company’) has reached a significant milestone. The counsel team (instructed by Alyson Reilly and Séamas Gray of gunnercooke) led by Rory Brown (and including Martin Young, Nora Wannagat, and Andrew Shipley) has been involved in over 25 heavily contested hearings (in the High Court in London and in the CFI, DIFCC, Dubai) in the last 13 months.
The UK government has released its recovery strategy dealing with how the UK might move from lockdown to the "new normal" enabling some businesses to re-open. The ability to begin rejuvenating businesses that have been mothballed for the past couple of months is good news but corporates should proceed with caution as they take steps to revamp the workplace.
As the business world starts to count the cost of the COVID-19 pandemic and the government measures taken to contain it, attention is turning to the tools available to help companies that have been financially impacted.
Many companies are deferring payments to conserve liquidity, raising difficult questions around directors’ duties and leading to an immediate focus on how to protect the business from resulting creditor action.
Wrongful Trading
On 14 May 2020, the UK Government extended the temporary suspension of wrongful trading liability until 30 June 2020.
The Insolvency Service has released statistics on the level of insolvencies in April 2020. This allows us to take a look at the immediate effect of insolvencies post-lockdown compared with those before.
Statistics