A scheme of arrangement under Part 26 of the Companies Act 2006 is a court-driven process that permits a restructuring on the basis that the requisite majority, by number and value, of the insolvent company’s creditors (or any class of them) vote in favour of it. Where there are different classes of creditors, the company …
Continue reading “Schemes of arrangement of overseas companies”
The right to acquire the freehold or an extended leasehold interest conferred on the lessees of blocks of flats pursuant to the Leasehold Reform Housing and Urban Development Act 1993 continues to raise tricky issues for property investors. The recent long-awaited decision in Westbrook Dolphin Square v Friends Provident [2014] tackles a number of those …
Continue reading “At cross porpoises? The lessons from Dolphin Square”
Lawyers have to deal with many issues when businesses are reorganising or making acquisitions but one that can be overlooked is protecting a firm’s ability to enforce restrictive covenants. This is particularly important in industries in which employees’ personal relationships carry significant value. In extreme cases it can influence the structure of a transaction but …
The Water Act 2014 (the Act) is a major step in the government’s liberalisation of the water industry and its provisions, though still awaiting formal implementation in many cases, represent significant opportunities both for companies operating within the industry and commercial water customers. For instance, water supply licences will become more flexible and the rules …
In the run up to the next general election on 7 May 2015, the UK government is implementing a raft of measures intended to reduce ‘illegal’ immigration in the UK. The latest of these measures is the Immigration Act 2014 (the Act), which received royal assent on 14 May 2014. The first element of this …
Continue reading “A review of the recent changes to UK immigration law and sponsorship”
People largely associate forum shopping in divorces with crossing foreign borders, rather than moving within the UK. The reality, however, is that the Scottish laws regulating financial provision upon divorce are very different from those in England. In many cases this difference has little impact on the eventual outcome. However, in 5-10% of cases the …
Continue reading “England v Scotland: the difference on divorce and cohabitation”
The Jackson reforms, effective from 1 April 2013, brought about a number of significant changes to the Civil Procedure Rules (CPR), perhaps the most fundamental of which was the amendment of the overriding objective at CPR 1.1(1). Prior to amendment, Rule 1.1(1) stated that the CPR were designed to enable the court to deal with …
In a contractual dispute involving a written agreement, parties can face difficulties in proving the effect they originally intended particular words of the agreement to have, perhaps because the wording is ambiguous or fails to adequately express the intention of the contracting parties. In such circumstances, the court will analyse the agreement and the intention …
Many parties will require that certain aspects of a contract are to be performed in a timely manner. Indeed, written contracts will often include provisions that ‘time is of the essence’. The benefit of making time of essence is that this stipulation becomes a condition of the contract: if the performing party fails to perform …
The widespread deployment of anaerobic digestion facilities is finally becoming a reality after many years of gradual but slow progress. Interest in gas to grid facilities has been a particular feature, prompted by the incentives available under the Non-Domestic Renewable Heat Incentive (RHI). This article explores the regulatory and contractual foundations behind the gas to …
Continue reading “The legal implications of gas to grid: a bio-methane revolution”