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.

However, I would suggest that, at least normally, in order for a company to have incurred a relevant "obligation" under rule 13.12(1)(b), it must have taken, or been subjected to, some step or combination of steps which (a) had some legal effect (such as putting it under some legal duty or into some legal relationship), and which (b) resulted in it being vulnerable to the specific liability in question, such that there would be a real prospect of that liability being incurred.

There are, as I see it, a number of serious difficulties with this submission. First, on a natural reading of 2.88(7) it applies to a surplus in the hands of the administrator rather than in the hands of a subsequent liquidator. Read in its context, it seems to direct the administrator as to the application of the surplus which he holds.

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.

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.

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.