Introduction

The Chancellor’s 2014 Budget speech revealed significant  changes to the way in which pension scheme members will be  able to access their savings. This move falls as just one of a raft  of changes to workplace pensions which Steve Webb MP has  described as a “pensions revolution”.

Insolvent Defendants

Corporate Insolvency

Dissolution

1. Corporate bodies (limited companies or LLPs) have a separate legal identity that ceases to exist upon dissolution. Dissolution can occur, broadly speaking, in two ways, one is at the end of the process of winding up (whether voluntary or compulsory) and the other is by the process of striking off the Register of Companies 

or limited liability partnerships. The latter occurs either as a result of the company’s

On 8 May 2014, the Supreme Court ordered the CPS to pay the costs and expenses of a receiver appointed over assets, which were not recoverable from a defendant under investigation (Barnes (the former Court Appointed Receiver) v The Eastenders Group and another [2014] UKSC 26).

10 April 2014
[2014] EWHC 1132 (Ch)
Chancery Division (HHJ Simon Barker QC)

Instead of making an administration order as sought and which was unopposed, the Court brought on an extant winding up petition for hearing and appointed a provisional liquidator.

24 February 2014
[2014] EWCA Civ 180
Court of Appeal (Patten, Lewison and Sharp LJJ)

The fact that rent payable in advance had fallen due prior to the tenant company entering administration did not prevent that that rent being payable an expense of the liquidation of the tenant company under the salvage/Lundy Granite principle.  The amount of rent so payable was a question of fact.

28 February 2014
[2014] EWHC 540 (Ch)
Companies Court (Etherton C)

When is a company’s property not its property?

10 February 2014
[2014] EWHC 229 (Ch)
Chancery Division (Etherton C)

A deputy registrar was wrong to dismiss a discharged bankrupt’s annulment application when the only creditor had decided not to prove for its debt.  The deputy register also erred in his approach to the TIB’s application to change the basis of his remuneration.

03 April 2014
[2014] EWCA Civ 383
Court of Appeal (Sullivan, McFarlane and Lewison LJJ)

Further guidance from the Court of Appeal on the meaning of insolvency and the relationship between the cash flow and the balance sheet tests.  A company that can only pay its debts as they fall due by incurring further debt is still insolvent. 

The courts have been busy in recent months considering various schemes of arrangement and reconstructions, including the following 4 unusual and high-profile applications.

In the matter of Co-operative Bank plc

18 December 2013

Companies Court (David Richards J)

[2014] EWHC 4397 (Ch)

21 January 2014
[2014] EWCA Civ 26
Court of Appeal (Arden, Sullivan and Davis LJJ)

Following suspension of IVAs, all creditors were bound by varied IVAs approved at a further creditors' meeting directed by the court, even if they had become creditors after the initial suspension.