Welcome to this quarter's insolvency and restructuring update.
This issue brings together ten significant decisions from New Zealand, Singapore, England and Wales, and Hong Kong.
We begin with four New Zealand decisions addressing recurring issues in construction and corporate insolvency: the treatment of retention funds in a contractor's liquidation, the interaction between the Construction Contracts Act's "pay now, argue later" regime and liquidation, the appointment of receivers under the Farm Debt Mediation Act, and the liquidation of deadlocked trustee companies.
We then turn to two decisions on auditor liability in large-scale corporate collapses, before examining two cases on the validity of out-of-court administrator appointments, and close with two decisions on cross-border debt recovery and liquidator conduct.
Keep an eye out for two further articles due to be published shortly by us on complex directions applications currently before the High Court, in which Buddle Findlay acts for the liquidators. The first upcoming article will cover the Tamarind case arising from the insolvency of the joint venture operating the Tui oil field, which raises issues of set-off, public nuisance, unjust enrichment and breach of statutory duty.
The second will cover the third substantive directions application in the Cryptopia liquidation, in which liquidators sought directions on completing distributions, dealing with unclaimed holdings, and whether the trusts should be terminated in favour of unsecured creditors (including hack victims) once distributions were complete. The liquidators also sought guidance on whether to admit a claim for hack related losses and, if so, at what value. The claimant sought for a Bitcoin-value assessment, rather than the Part 16 claim valuation process. These two additional articles will follow shortly.
As always, we hope you find these summaries a useful and efficient way to stay abreast of developments in our field.