Singularis Holdings Ltd v Price Waterhouse Coopers
| Jurisdiction | UK Non-devolved |
| Judge | Lord Sumption,Lord Collins,Lord Clarke,Lord Mance,Lord Neuberger |
| Judgment Date | 10 November 2014 |
| Neutral Citation | [2014] UKPC 36 |
| Court | Privy Council |
| Docket Number | Appeal No 0040 of 2014 |
| Date | 10 November 2014 |
[2014] UKPC 36
Lord Neuberger
Lord Mance
Lord Clarke
Lord Sumption
Lord Collins
Appeal No 0040 of 2014
Privy Council
From the Court of Appeal of Bermuda
Appellant
Gabriel Moss QC Felicity Toube QC Stephen Robins Rod Attride-Stirling
(Instructed by Blake Morgan LLP)
Respondent
David Chivers QC Paul Smith Scott Pearman
(Instructed by Herbert Smith Freehills LLP)
Heard on 29 and 30 April 2014
This appeal is closely connected with the concurrent appeal in PricewaterhouseCoopers (Bermuda Exempted Partnership No 7420) v Saad Investments Co Ltd ("SICL"). The two appeals concern related companies incorporated in the Cayman Islands, both of which have been ordered by the Grand Court of the Cayman Islands to be wound up. Hugh Dickson, Stephen Akers and Mark Byers of Grant Thornton Special Services (Cayman) Ltd were appointed by that court as the Joint Official Liquidators of both companies. The background to both appeals is set out in the Advice of the Board on that Appeal, delivered by Lord Neuberger, and it need not be repeated here.
The common feature of both appeals is that they concern attempts on the part of the liquidators to obtain from the companies' former auditors PricewaterhouseCoopers ("PwC"), information, whether in oral or documentary form, relating to the companies' affairs. The evidence is that the liquidators have been unable to trace certain assets which they consider must have existed, and that relevant information about those assets is likely to be in the possession of PwC. This has not been accepted in terms, but neither has it been disputed. The Board will proceed upon the footing that it is correct.
The Grand Court of the Cayman Islands has power under section 103 of the Cayman Islands Companies Law to order any person, whether or not resident in the Islands, who has a relevant connection to a company in liquidation (including its former auditor) to "transfer or deliver up to the liquidator any property or documents belonging to the company." The Grand Court has made such an order against PwC, and the Board was told that PwC has complied with it. Consistently with the provision conferring the power, it extends only to material belonging to the companies.
Both the SICL and the Singularis appeals concern attempts by the Liquidators to obtain material belonging to the auditors themselves, principally their working papers, by invoking the corresponding powers conferred on the Supreme Court of Bermuda. They are in wider terms, which are not limited to information belonging to the company. Section 195 of the Companies Act 1981 of Bermuda provides:
"Power to summon persons suspected of having property of company etc.
195. (1) The Court may, at any time after the appointment of a provisional liquidator or the making of a winding up order, summon before it any officer of the company or persons known or suspected to have in his possession any property of the company or supposed to be indebted to the company, or any person whom the Court deems capable of giving information concerning the promotion, formation, trade, dealings, affairs or property of the company.
(2) The Court may examine such person on oath, concerning the matters aforesaid, either by word of mouth or on written interrogatories, and may reduce his answers to writing and require him to sign them.
(3) The Court may require such person to produce any books and papers in his custody or power relating to the company, but, where he claims any lien on books or papers produced by him, the production shall be without prejudice to that lien, and the Court shall have jurisdiction in the winding up to determine all questions relating to that lien."
The power of the Bermuda court under section 195 is exercisable only in respect of a company which that court has ordered to be wound up. It was therefore dependent in this case on the existence of a power to wind up a company incorporated outside Bermuda. In the case of SICL the Supreme Court of Bermuda made a winding up order, and then made an order for production and oral examination against PwC in the winding up. However, in the SICL Appeal the Board has advised Her Majesty that the winding up order must be stayed because (with immaterial exceptions) the court had no jurisdiction to wind up a company incorporated outside Bermuda. The consequence is that all proceedings in the winding up of SICL have ceased to be effective, including the order made under section 195.
In the case of Singularis a different procedure was adopted. No winding up order was ever sought or made in Bermuda. Instead, Kawaley CJ made an order recognising in Bermuda the status of the Liquidators by virtue of their appointment by the Grand Court of the Cayman Islands, and exercising what he termed a common law power "by analogy with the statutory powers contained in section 195 of the Companies Act" to order PwC and Paul Suddaby (an officer of PwC) to produce the same documents which they could have been ordered to produce under section 195. PwC were also ordered to have a partner, employee or agent acceptable to the liquidators available to answer oral or written interrogatories. The liquidators were given leave to serve the proceedings on Mr Suddaby and any other "partners or officers" of PwC out of the jurisdiction.
The Court of Appeal (Bell AJA, Zacca P and Auld JA) set aside the Chief Justice's order. Bell AJA and Zacca P doubted whether there was jurisdiction to make a section 195 order at common law in circumstances where section 195 did not apply. But the ground of their decision was that it was not in any event an appropriate exercise of discretion, because the court should not make an order in support of a Cayman liquidation which could not have been made by the Cayman court itself. They regarded the Liquidators' claim as "unjustifiable forum-shopping". Auld JA agreed with this, but went further. In his view, there was no jurisdiction because the Bermuda court could not disregard the limitation of section 195 of the Bermuda Act to cases where a winding up order could be and had been made.
Accordingly two issues arise on the present appeal. The first is whether the Bermuda court has a common law power to assist a foreign liquidation by ordering the production of information (in oral or documentary form), in circumstances where (i) the Bermuda court has no power to wind up an overseas company such as Singularis and (ii) its statutory power to order the production of information is limited to cases where the company has been wound up in Bermuda. The second issue is whether, if such a power exists, it is exercisable in circumstances where an equivalent order could not have been made by the court in which the foreign liquidation is proceeding.
The common law of Bermuda is the same, in every relevant respect, as that of England. The difficulty is that in England the common law concerning cross-border insolvencies has developed to fill the interstices in what is essentially a statutory framework, and the statutory framework differs in significant respects in Bermuda. The main difference is that the English courts have jurisdiction to wind up unregistered companies, including those incorporated outside the United Kingdom. This jurisdiction has existed since it was first conferred by section 199 of the Companies Act 1862. It is currently conferred by section 221 of the Insolvency Act 1986. The Bermuda courts have no equivalent power.
The English courts have for at least a century and a half exercised a power to assist a foreign liquidation by taking control of the English assets of the insolvent company. The power was founded partly on statute and partly on the practice of judges of the Chancery Division. Its statutory foundation was the power to wind up overseas companies. The exercise of this power generated a body of practice concerning what came to be known as ancillary liquidations. The English court would order the winding up in England of a company already in liquidation or likely to go into liquidation under the law of its incorporation, provided that there was a sufficient connection with England and a reasonable possibility of benefit to the petitioners. In theory, the effect of the winding up order was to create a statutory trust of the world-wide assets of the company to be dealt with in accordance with English statutory rules of distribution: Ayerst v C & K (Construction) Ltd [1976] AC 167, Banco Nacional de Cuba v Cosmos Trading Corporation [2000] 1 BCLC 813, 819–820 (Sir Richard Scott V-C). In practice, as Millett J pointed out in In re International Tin Council [1987] Ch 419, 446–447, "Although a winding up in the country of incorporation will normally be given extra-territorial effect, a winding up elsewhere has only local operation." The English courts recognised the limits of the international reach of their own proceedings by treating the English winding up as ancillary to the principal winding up in the country of the company's incorporation. They exercised their power of direction over the liquidator by limiting his functions to getting in the English assets and to dealing with them in such a way as to bring about a distribution of the company's world-wide assets on as uniform a basis as was consistent with certain overriding principles of English insolvency law. The earliest reported case in which the practice was recognised is the decision of Kay J in In re Matheson Brothers Ltd (1884) 27 Ch D 225, but it is likely to have been older than that. In these cases, the court is exercising the ordinary powers of the English court to control the winding up of a company, which are wholly statutory. But the court was using them for a purpose which differed...
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