Currently, when a UK airline enters insolvency, its operations cease, aeroplanes are grounded and passengers are stranded – in part due to the heavy industry regulation and, in part, because of complex aeroplane financing arrangements. Any operational continuity enabling the repatriation of passengers would be a loss-making activity likely to deplete the amount of money available to the company’s creditors; a result that would be contrary to the aim of UK insolvency processes in general. This starkly contrasts with insolvent U.S. airlines, all of which have been in U.S.

This judgment is an important one. It concerned an application by the joint liquidators of Comet (formerly joint administrators) for directions permitting them not to carry out any further investigation into the validity of the fixed and floating charge held by a single purpose vehicle (“HAL”) that had been granted by Comet under a year before it collapsed into administration. The joint liquidators also sought a direction that they be permitted to transfer a further tranche of funds to HAL that had been realised in the administration.

Are the regimes of construction adjudication and insolvency incompatible? Recent Court of Appeal authority suggested that they are, but in Meadowside Building Developments Ltd (In Liquidation) v 12-18 Hill Street Management Company Ltd [2019] EWHC (TCC), Adam Constable QC sitting as a district judge in the high court has clarified the exceptional circumstances in which a company in liquidation can enforce an adjudicator’s decision in its favour.

The case of Hunt (as Liquidator of System Building Services Group Ltd) v Michie & Ors [2020] EWHC 54 (Ch) examines whether directors’ duties continue after the company has become insolvent and confirms that they do, bringing welcome clarity to the point. As such, Insurers will need to review their policies to make clear if they wish to cover this risk.

Systems Building Services Group Ltd, Re [2020] EWHC 54 (Ch)

Liquidation is not a panacea for the relevance and application of directors' duties. A practical example of which involves a director of a company in insolvency procuring and agreeing to an off-market sale of a property to himself by a rogue IP at a price which he knew to be a significant undervalue.

Section 239(5) of the Insolvency Act 1986 (the “1986 Act”) limits the jurisdiction to reverse a preference to situations where “the company which gave the preference was influenced in deciding to give it by a desire to produce” the prohibited result. This involves a subjective enquiry which turns on the relevant actor’s state of mind.

Yesterday the UK Insolvency Service released their quarterly statistics spanning October to December 2019. These confirm that liquidations and administrations in 2019 hit levels not seen for over five years. This signals a potentially serious underlying concern about the UK economy.

In the landmark decision in Re Systems Building Services Group Limited [2020] EWHC 54 (Ch), ICC Judge Barber held that the duties of a director survive the insolvency of a company.

On 25 February 2020, the High Court handed down an important ruling: Granville Technology Group Limited (In Liquidation) and Others v Elpida Memory (Europe) Gmbh and Others [2020] EWHC 415 (Comm). This is the first ruling by an English Court on how the Limitation Act 1980 should be applied to secret cartel claims.

We previously considered the potential implications for insolvency professionals of the rise of cryptocurrencies (available here). One of the principal issues identified was the uncertainty surrounding the legal status of cryptocurrencies; what class of asset were they and, subsequently, how would they be treated under English law?