A Jersey company or one of its creditors may wish the company to be placed into administration in England under Schedule B1 of the UK's Insolvency Act 1986 (the "Act").

It has been common practice in recent years for the English Courts to make administration orders in respect of Jersey companies with English situs assets, based upon letters of request from the Royal Court of Jersey issued pursuant to section 426 of the UK Insolvency Act 1986.  However, a recent case in the English High Court has challenged the basis upon which these administration orders have historically been made. 

Background

A Jersey company or one of its creditors may wish the company to be placed into administration in England under Schedule B1 of the UK's Insolvency Act 1986 (the "Act").

In the matter of the representation of Anglo Irish Asset Finance [2010] JRC087

This is the latest decision of the Royal Court in relation to an application by a UK creditor (a bank) for a letter of request to be issued to the English High Court requesting that an administration order be made in respect of a Jersey company.

There has been a considerable amount of interest from clients recently on putting Jersey companies holding UK real property and other assets into English administration. Where a Jersey company and its creditors intend to rescue the company as a going concern, or English administration would achieve a better realisation for creditors than a désastre or a winding up, it may be advantageous to commence English administration.

On 2 March 2016, the Luxembourg Court of Appeal has denied an appeal filed by Dr. Adil Elias, Faisal Islamic Bank of Egypt and a handful of other creditors of BCCI against a judgment previously rendered by the Luxembourg Commercial Court, which had refused to reopen the liquidation proceedings of Bank of Credit and Commerce International S.A. (“BCCI S.A.”) and BCCI Holdings (Luxembourg) S.A. (“BCCI Holdings”).

Capital call subscription credit facilities (each, a “Facility”) continued their positive momentum in 2013  and had an excellent year as an asset class. As in the recent past, investor (“Investor”) funding performance remained as pristine as ever, and the only exclusion events we are aware of involved funding  delinquencies by noninstitutional Investors (in many cases subsequently cured). Correspondingly, we  were not consulted on a single Facility payment event of default in 2013.

The FSA has published a short update on Lifemark S.A. (Lifemark). The FSA reports that on 11 February 2010, the Luxembourg financial services regulator, the Commission de Surveillance du Secteur Financier (the CSSF), applied to the Court in Luxembourg to extend the appointment of Eric Collard of KPMG as provisional administrator in respect of Lifemark.

The retention of a proportion of the contractor's fee is common practice in construction contracts. The parties sometimes agree (usually in unamended industry standard building contracts) that the retention amount is held on trust by the employer in a separate bank account. But what happens if there is no such express provision and the employer becomes insolvent?

The Dutch legislator has published a bill for a new pre-insolvency tool, which seeks to combine the best of the UK scheme of arrangement and the US Chapter 11 procedure. The new legislation will be formally called 'The Act regarding the binding approval of debt restructuring agreements'. Among restructuring professionals it is already widely referred to as the WHOA (Wet homologatie onderhands akkoord) or the "Dutch Scheme". Currently, the WHOA is pending final approval by the Dutch parliament and is expected to enter into force on 1 July 2020.