Insolvency

Members have acted in very large corporate insolvency disputes

Members of Chambers have a wide range of experience in matters concerning personal and corporate insolvency, and the insolvency of deceased persons’ estates, particularly where issues relating to traditional trusts or the law of administration of estates are involved.

Members’ general experience includes:

  • Bringing and defending petitions to wind up companies (including acting in injunctions to restrain presentation or advertisement of such petitions)
  • Challenging statutory demands
  • Bringing and defending bankruptcy petitions
  • Claims for and against office-holders such as liquidators, administrators and trustees in bankruptcy
  • Disputes concerning section 423 Insolvency Act 1986 (transactions defrauding creditors)
  • Disputes concerning the beneficial entitlement to assets in an insolvency context
  • Directors’ disqualification proceedings
  • Advice and litigation concerning insolvent estates

Members have acted in very large corporate insolvency disputes, such as the collapse of the Nortel telecommunications business (the largest bankruptcy case in Canadian history) and of the Lehman Brothers business, and in other disputes such as those concerning the insolvent estate of the Russian oligarch, Boris Berezovsky, and the ownership of a historically important pottery collection following the insolvency of the Wedgwood group of companies.

Members have also been involved on behalf of HMRC in the Abbey Forwarding case, which is the first reported decision concerning the calling in of the cross-undertaking in damages on a freezing injunction made on the appointment of a provisional liquidator of a business.