Insolvency Debt in UK Law

I therefore conclude that the Toshoku principle does indeed establish as a general rule that where by statute Parliament imposes a financial liability which is not a provable debt on a company in an insolvency process then, unless it constitutes an expense under any other sub-paragraph in the twin expenses regimes for liquidation and administration, it will constitute a necessary disbursement of the liquidator or administrator.

But the domestic court must at least be able to provide assistance by doing whatever it could have done in the case of a domestic insolvency. The purpose of recognition is to enable the foreign office holder or the creditors to avoid having to start parallel insolvency proceedings and to give them the remedies to which they would have been entitled if the equivalent proceedings had taken place in the domestic forum.

If these two requirements are satisfied, it is also, I think, relevant to consider (c) whether it would be consistent with the regime under which the liability is imposed to conclude that the step or combination of steps gave rise to an obligation under rule 13.12(1)(b).

Once these have been ascertained, the Court can then embark on the second stage of the process, which is one of categorisation. If their intention, properly gathered from the language of the instrument, is to grant the company rights in respect of the charged assets which are inconsistent with the nature of a fixed charge, then the charge cannot be a fixed charge however they may have chosen to describe it.

The context of the crucial words in r.5.17(3) is that there is a general prohibition on voting by the creditor with an unliquidated or unascertained claim, to which prohibition there is an exception if the chairman agrees. It is not an agreement on the value (that, in the voluntary arrangement, is for the supervisor who might arrive at a significantly higher value): the chairman only agrees to put on the debt an estimated minimum value.

The liquidation of a company is treated as the equivalent for this purpose as bankruptcy: Highland Engineering Ltd v Thomson, 1972 SC 87, 91, per Lord Fraser. The parties to a construction contract are entitled to the benefit of the doctrine, just like anyone else. The same result is achieved under English law by rule 4.90 of the Insolvency Rules 1986: see Bouygues (UK) Ltd v Dahl-Jensen (UK) Ltd [2000] BLR 522, paras 30-32 per Chadwick LJ, although the point was not taken in that case.

The function of the rule is not to prevent a double proof of the same debt against two separate estates (that is what insolvency practitioners call "double dip"). The rule prevents a double proof of what is in substance the same debt being made against the same estate, leading to the payment of a double dividend out of one estate. It is for that reason sometimes called the rule against double dividend.