Thursday 6 October 2022

UK: The Supreme Court on the 'creditor duty' - its existence, content and engagement

And so we have it - one of the most important company law judgments of recent years: BTI 2014 LLC v Sequana SA & Ors [2022] UKSC 25. The existence of the common law 'creditor duty' (also known as the 'rule in West Mercia' after the case West Mercia Safetywear v Dodd [1988] BCLC 250) has been confirmed and its content and application explained. A summary of the judgment is available here and here (pdf). A summary was also read out by Lord Briggs in the Supreme Court yesterday - see below (if the video does not appear below, it can also be found here): 

Monday 3 October 2022

Malta: MFSA publishes new corporate governance code

Earlier this year - in March, to be precise - I noted that the Malta Financial Services Authority was consulting on a new corporate governance code that would cover all unlisted MFSA authorised entities. The consultation has since ended and the new code published: see here (pdf). 

G20/OECD Principles of Corporate Governance - consultation on proposed revisions

The OECD has published for consultation the revisions it proposes to make to the G20/OECD Principles of Corporate Governance: see here (pdf). The public consultation ends later this month on the 21st.  Amongst the revisions is a proposed new chapter on sustainability and resilience.  

UK: The directors' duty to consider the interests of creditors - Supreme Court judgment this week in BTI case

After an unplanned break from blogging, I am happy to return with news that, on Wednesday this week (October 5), the UK Supreme Court will deliver its judgment in BTI 2014 LLC v Sequana SA [2022] UKSC 25. The court was required to consider, to quote directly from its summary, whether "the trigger for the directors' duty to consider creditors is merely a real risk of, as opposed to a probability of or close proximity to, insolvency".