As the nights draw in, and with any hint of an Indian summer long gone, the Labour government is finding life in government isn’t as easy as perhaps it looked from opposition. While we wait for Labour’s first budget at the end of this month, we’ve got a jam-packed edition of our bulletin to keep you occupied.
Economically things look better than they have been (but not as good as they could be): will the expectation that interest rates might fall before Christmas be enough to offset the prolonged pain of stubborn inflation and the impact of the cost-of-living crisis? You might have spotted Matt and Lucy commenting in the press on such issues in the context of the continued rise of CVLs seen in the monthly insolvency statistics. The possibility of an interest rate reprieve has come too late for a number of businesses operating a franchise model: Helen and I consider the implications of franchise insolvency in an article first published in Elite Franchise. Meanwhile Matt muses on the implications of balance sheet insolvency in the context of premiership rugby clubs.
Directors’ duties continue to be a hot topic, with the decisions in respect of the conduct of the BHS directors potentially changing the emphasis in claims which officeholders bring against former directors. We look at the decisions in BHS on liability and quantum (it is an eye watering sum), as well as at the lessons for directors in the recent decision in Manolete Partners v Karim. A key message for directors of financially stressed companies remains to seek professional advice at an early stage, ensure it is properly scoped – and make sure it is considered and relied on. We can help you with that so please do reach out to me or any of the team.
We’ve reported this year on the increasing use of restructuring plans by businesses that are unable to weather the financial storm. 2024 has seen market shaping developments in this area: following the decisions in Addler, McDermott and Aggregate, the latest decision has come in the Cineworld restructuring. Jo considers that for us (and we’ve included our earlier articles as a refresher).
We’ve also seen a number of technical decisions relating to administration extensions (what if there are no longer any secured creditors?), conversion to a CVL (what if there is no payment to unsecured creditors?) and whether an agreement to arbitrate trumps a winding-up application (spoiler: the Supreme Court now says it doesn’t). Lucy, Louise and colleagues from our disputes team give you the key takeaways.
A full list of our recent articles and items is below. Let us know if you have any comments on the items covered, or suggestions for topics for us to cover in the future. And as the autumn conference season ramps up, we will be out and about: some of the events we will be attending are listed below. Do get in touch if you’ll also be attending as we’d love to see you in person.
Finally, that leaves me to give you one (big) piece of team news. After 8 years with Stevens & Bolton, David is finishing his illustrious career by making a move in-house! David has been a stalwart of our team and will be hugely missed, but we wish him the very best with his new role.
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Tim Carter
Matthew Padian