Insolvency: Why is Croydon Council declaring itself insolvent? Croydon Council became only the second UK local authority in twenty years to declare itself insolvent when it issued a Section 114 Notice on 11 November, confirming that it cannot fulfil its statutory obligation to balance its books. Northamptonshire County Council was the first back in February 2018. The immediate effect is
Financial help for businesses The Coronavirus crisis has created the most difficult financial climate in living memory, maybe for best part of a century. Equally, never has there been so much help and support for entrepreneurs battling to keep their businesses afloat. The government has laid a protective cloak of loans, payment deferrals and legislation over our commercial Pandemic puddle,
Fraud in the workplace Fraud is never far from the headlines. A little while ago, Patisserie Valerie collapsed into Administration after it was found to have overstated its cash position by £30m and failed to disclose unauthorised overdrafts of nearly £10m. More recently, the global payments processing firm Wirecard filed for insolvency after admitting that €1.7bn of its assets were
Crown preference background The Finance Act 2020 has restored preferential status in an insolvency as from December 2020 to Crown debts, such as unpaid VAT and PAYE. This reverses a change made way back in 2003 by the Enterprise Act, which was intended to placate banks for losing their ability to take control of struggling borrowers by appointing their own
It may have taken almost twenty years, but the insolvency profession has finally got round to adapting the Administration insolvency process brought in by the 2002 Enterprise Act to reflect changing public attitudes towards the exercise of creditor power in business rescue. There is a certain irony that the sudden interest in so called ‘Light Touch’ Administrations has been prompted
This pandemic is a crisis like no other in the past century and beyond. It is stressing every aspect of a company’s business model. Revenues are being slashed, profitability savaged, supply chains stretched and working capital pulled one way and another – all in a volatile and unpredictable commercial world, where official guidance and realities change almost by the moment.
