The administrators of Safe Hands Plans, the pre-paid funerals company whose collapse has left 46,000 customers with a combined £60 million shortfall, have succeeded in appointing liquidators to a Cayman Islands company where customer money was funnelled.

The appointment of independent insolvency practitioners over Navigator in the offshore tax haven was made after concerns about the alleged “misuse of trust funds” and is an “important step” in the process of returning funds to funeral plan holders, they have been told.

Administrators at FRP Advisory were appointed in March 2022 after Safe Hands withdrew an application to the Financial Conduct Authority before it took on regulation of the pre-paid funerals market.

Investigations by…

New Delhi, Jan 3 (PTI) The insolvency appellate tribunal has held that there is no bar against assessment proceedings by statutory authorities, including the EPFO, once the liquidation process starts against any debt-ridden company under the IBC.

However, it also clarified that once a debt-ridden company is protected under moratorium after the initiation of insolvency proceedings against it, the Employees’ Provident Fund Organisation (EPFO) cannot continue such proceedings.

While dismissing the two petitions filed by the EPFO, National Company Law Appellate Tribunal…

New Delhi, Jan 3 (PTI) The insolvency appellate tribunal has held that there is no bar against assessment proceedings by statutory authorities, including the EPFO, once the liquidation process starts against any debt-ridden company under the IBC.

However, it also clarified that once a debt-ridden company is protected under moratorium after the initiation of insolvency proceedings against it, the Employees’ Provident Fund Organisation (EPFO) cannot continue such proceedings.

While dismissing the two petitions filed by the EPFO, National Company Law Appellate Tribunal (NCLAT) said once a company is protected under moratorium as per the provisions of Section 14 (1) of the…

The insolvency appellate tribunal has held that there is no bar against assessment proceedings by statutory authorities, including the EPFO, once the liquidation process starts against any debt-ridden company under the IBC. However, it also clarified that once a debt-ridden company is protected under moratorium after the initiation of insolvency proceedings against it, the Employees’ Provident Fund Organisation (EPFO) cannot continue such proceedings. While dismissing the two petitions filed by the EPFO, National Company Law Appellate Tribunal (NCLAT) said once a company is protected under moratorium as per the provisions of Section 14 (1) of the Insolvency & Bankruptcy Code (IBC), assessment proceedings for determination of quantum of…

New Delhi, Jan 3 (PTI) The insolvency appellate tribunal has held that there is no bar against assessment proceedings by statutory authorities, including the EPFO, once the liquidation process starts against any debt-ridden company under the IBC.
     However, it also clarified that once a debt-ridden company is protected under moratorium after the initiation of insolvency proceedings against it, the Employees’ Provident Fund Organisation (EPFO) cannot continue such proceedings.
     While dismissing the two petitions filed by the EPFO, National Company Law Appellate Tribunal (NCLAT) said once a company is protected under moratorium as per the provisions of Section 14 (1) of the Insolvency & Bankruptcy Code (IBC), assessment…

In Heidelberg, Germany, it was business as usual.

The polymer production line was pushing out materials for packaging and postage. The service bureau arm of the business continued to provide printed parts. Up the road in Frankfurt, public-facing employees were making connections, promoting products and highlighting application success stories.

Is that piquing your interest? Probably not. It’s the same few days any AM solutions provider can expect as half the team travels to an industry trade show and the other half holds down the fort.

But just because Forward AM was procuring leads at Formnext and fulfilling client orders back home, it doesn’t mean all was well. Less than five months after carving the company out of BASF,…

The Insolvency Appellate Tribunal has stated that statutory bodies, including the Employees’ Provident Fund Organisation (EPFO), can initiate assessment proceedings once the liquidation process begins for any insolvent company under the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code (IBC).

Importantly, the tribunal also underscored that during the moratorium period triggered by the insolvency proceedings, no such assessment from EPFO is permissible. The tribunal’s dismissal of EPFO’s petitions emphasized the prohibition of these proceedings under Section 14 (1) of the IBC when a company comes under moratorium protection.

Once liquidation is ordered, the moratorium under Section 14 ceases, and a different moratorium under Section 33(5) takes effect,…

The Jubilee Year is, for many, about making a pilgrimage to Rome, walking through one of the Holy Doors at the various basilicas. Thanks to Pope Francis, there is a Holy Door at the Rebibbia prison. Such pilgrimages confer a plenary indulgence, the remission of temporal punishment for sins already forgiven, on those who make them.

In advance of the 2000 Jubilee, Pope John Paul II and many other religious leaders called for a different kind of remission, canceling the debt of impoverished nations. Jubilee USA was founded at that time to help make this retrieval of the ancient practice of forgiving debt during a jubilee a reality.

Francis, in his New Year’s address, made debt forgiveness a central theme of this…

The Insolvency Service has just released its Creditors’ Voluntary Liquidation (CVL) Research Report.  The purpose of this report was to ascertain whether the recent reforms in 2017 on the CVL process had, in fact, made the process more efficient and increased the returns to creditors.

Analysis was performed on a randomly sampled dataset of 2,717 completed CVLs which started in 2017.

Efficiency was assessed through three quantitative measures: time to complete the CVL, associated costs, and recovery rates for creditors.

Time: 6% of the sampled cases were ongoing at the time of data collection. The median duration to complete a CVL was 712 days.

Cost: The median cost, represented as fees relative to the estate’s value, was 163%.

Recovery…

Staff realised it was no ordinary day at work when they turned up at their Melbourne offices to find they could no longer access the building.

Men in suits told them the company had gone into administration and it was now under their control. The locks had been changed.

For a few days, the 20 or so staff continued to work before administrators let almost everyone go, keeping on just a skeleton crew to maintain the business. Then those staff members, too, were also let go.

That happened last month after Victorian solar energy provider G-Store appointed Philip Newman of insolvency firm PCI Partners as administrator to figure out how to pay the $3.8 million debt it had racked up.

“Staff were fully invested in that business,” one person…

Big Lots has managed to save up to 400 stores in the 11th hour after striking a deal with Gordon Brothers and Variety Wholesalers. This deal has saved the former retail giant from completely liquidating its assets. Let’s take a look at the details of this save.

Big Lots’ 11th-Hour Deal

According to USA Today, 200 to 400 Big Lots locations were moved to Variety Wholesalers, Inc. as part of a deal the retailer struck with Gordon Brothers Retail Partners, an asset liquidation company based in Boston.

With over 400 locations throughout the Mid-Atlantic and Southeast, Variety Wholesalers is based in Hendersonville, North Carolina. Roses, Roses Express, Bargain Town, Maxway, and Bill’s Dollar Stores are some of its chains.

Variety…