Topic: Distressed assets and portfolios

We examine what a trade credit insurance is and why it is important to keep insurers close in special situations.

The Court of Appeal overturned the High Court’s decision to sanction the Adler Group’s restructuring plan

The South African Companies Act, 2008 (the Companies Act) provides a statutory financial restructuring mechanism.

Earlier this year the English High Court held that a charge granted by a company (Avanti) was properly characterised as a fixed charge (as opposed to a floating charge), despite Avanti retaining a degree of control to dispose of the charged assets. The decision is the first major ruling on how to characterise fixed and floating charges since the leading House of Lords’ case, Re Spectrum Plus . It marks an evolution in the law by moving away from a rigid analysis that suggested only total control over a charged asset by a security holder would constitute a fixed charge.

The German Federal Supreme Court (Bundesgerichtshof, BGH) recently had the opportunity to revisit the controversial discord between corporate and insolvency laws on the issue of claw back of shareholder dividends. In principle, the provisions of the German Stock Corporation Act (Aktiengesetz, AktG) protect shareholders from reimbursement claims in the event that they receive dividend payments, which later turn out to have been illegal. However, this only applies if the shareholders did not have knowledge about the unlawfulness of the dividend payments. In its judgement of 30 March 2023 (IX ZR 121/22), the BGH ruled that this does not extend to a protection from insolvency related claw back claims.

We are delighted to announce the launch of Norton Rose Fulbright’s new Restructuring Touchpoint Blog – a dedicated hub of resources that will bring you the latest developments on restructuring and insolvency across the world.