Although this is a technical post about insolvency, it would be remiss of us to attend to the insolvency aspects of the forthcoming Bank Holiday without first expressing our sorrow and deepest condolences on the passing of Queen Elizabeth II. We have lost parents and grandparents and we cannot imagine doing so in the full glare of international attention, while trying to deal with constitutional and ceremonial requirements. Our thoughts are with King Charles III and the rest of the Royal Family.
We have already received emails about the technical implications of the additional Bank Holiday that was announced over the weekend. For anyone that may not yet have heard, a Bank Holiday has been announced for the day of the Queen's funeral, Monday 19 September. While most of you are used to leaving time around Bank Holidays, the short notice of this one may give rise to unexpected consequences and this Blog is really just a "heads-up" to make you aware of some of the potential issues.
We will start with any decisions in CVLs that have already been convened for Monday 19 September. You could, in theory, bring any members’ meetings forward and still hold the creditors’ decision on the Monday, as there is no statutory restriction on when such a decision procedure can be held. Apart from potentially being seen as disrespectful, however, it may also be difficult for creditors to get involved, as, for example, any postal attempt at objecting could be delayed. If you wanted to go ahead despite the risk, it would require a board meeting to change the members’ meeting date and a new notice and signed short notice consent, but it would also create a centrebind, which is not ideal, especially if you were subsequently required to hold a physical meeting and another IP was appointed. Rather than risk such complications, we would suggest playing safe and starting the process again, writing out to creditors to withdraw the original notices and explaining why.
What made this much more complicated, however, is what it does to meetings scheduled to be held during the rest of the week. Anyone that has already convened decisions for Tuesday 20th onwards should be ok, as long as they also issue the statement of affairs quickly, if they have not already done so. The effect of the Bank Holiday is to make Friday the last business day before a Tuesday decision, so you should still check any decisions convened for Tuesday, and possibly Wednesday 21st, just to be sure that enough notice had been given and also that you have time to deliver the statement of affairs the business day before the meeting.
The largest amount of disruption, however, is likely to be for people that intended giving notice this week for decisions next week. Even if all creditors are UK based and you are giving notice by first class post, delivery takes place after 2 working days (so Wednesday if posted today). That makes Thursday the first day’s notice, Friday the second and Tuesday (20th) the third, so that the earliest you could now hold the decision would be Wednesday 21 September, with any statement of affairs having to be delivered by Tuesday 20th, so issued by first class post on Thursday 15 September. In the unlikely event that you are able to deliver everything by email, you may be able to shave a little time off, while using second class post or having to deliver to overseas creditors could extend the timings.
Although this Blog deals with CVL decisions, similar considerations apply to decisions in other procedures and any other statutory requirements that refer to "business days", such as notice of intention to appoint an administrator, notice to qualifying floating charge holders, and when calculating the business days before administrators' proposals are deemed approved where a paragraph 51 meeting is not being held. We could give more examples, but we think you get the picture.
The Blog post does not attempt to cover all of the permutations, just increase awareness of it so that everyone starts thinking before they convene decisions.
