In the following guest post, Francis Kean takes a look at the new UK Corporate Insolvency and Governance Act and the Act’s potential implications for D&O insurance coverage. Francis is a Partner, Financial Lines, at McGill and Partners. A version of this article previously was published as a McGill client alert. I would like to thank Francis for allowing me to publish his article as a guest post on this site. I welcome guest post submissions from responsible authors on topics of interest to this blog’s readers. Please contact me directly if you would like to submit a guest post. Here is Francis’s article.
Continue Reading Guest Post: The New UK Insolvency Act Exposes a Gap in Cover for D&O Insurance
Class actions are of course well-established in the United States, but class action litigation has never been as well-developed in the UK. Among a number of reasons for this arguably is the lack of an “opt-out” class action procedure in the UK. However, as detailed in an interesting July 2019 memo by Colin Hutton of the CMS law firm entitled “Opt-Out Class Actions in the UK: Are We Entering a New Era in Litigation?” (
In the following guest post, Tristan Hall, Andrew Milne, and Emma Boulding of the CMS Cameron McKenna Nabarro Olswang LLP law firm take a look at the increased risks to directors and officers in the U.K. for non-compliance with employer pension schemes, as well as the implications of those increased risks for D&O insurance purposes. I would like to thank the authors for their willingness to allow me to publish their article as a guest post on this site. I welcome guest post submissions from responsible authors on topics of interest to this blog’s readers. Please contact me directly if you would like to submit a guest post. Here is the authors’ article.
The highest-profile attempt to utilize the new U.K. regime for consumer class actions has come to a grinding halt. The case involved a claim alleging that MasterCard’s fee structure had resulted in overcharges to tens of millions of U.K. consumers. On July 21, 2017, the Competition Appeal Tribunal, newly re-organized to oversee the consumer class action regime, declined to grant the necessary collective proceedings order that would have allowed the action to go forward. The tribunal’s ruling is highly fact-specific and its decision to decline the collective proceedings order very much reflects the specific features of the claims against MasterCard, but the ruling nevertheless does raise concerns about the viability of the class action regime and its attractiveness to prospective claimants in other cases. A copy of the Tribunal’s July 21, 2017 order can be found 
A recent U.K. appellate court sends a strong cautionary note to litigation funders about the need for vigorous and independent pre-litigation due diligence and of the risks that can follow their support of an unmeritorious claim. In a November 2016 Judgment, the U.K. Court of Appeal ruled that the litigation funders that supported a claimant’s unsuccessful claim to oil field production rights are jointly and severally liable for the successful parties’ fees and costs. The Court’s ruling acknowledges litigation funding’s role in the system of civil justice, but the Court’s decision also highlights an expectation that the funders must evaluate the claims they support – and, because they have a substantial stake in a claim’s outcome , must accept the consequences if their evaluation is deficient. The U.K. Court of Appeals’ November 18, 2016 decision in Excalibur Ventures LLC v. Texas Keystone, Inc. et al. can be found 
There have been few more powerful forces acting recently on the litigation environment around the world than third-party litigation financing. The recent rise of litigation funding, often accompanied by the active involvement of U.S. law firms, is changing the face of litigation in numerous countries. The collective action to be filed against MasterCard later this summer in the U.K. by U.S. law firm Quinn Emanuel, in an initiative being financed by Chicago-based litigation funding firm Gerchen Keller Capital LLC, is the latest and highest profile example of this trends. Indeed, the anticipated MasterCard action in some ways reflects the coming together of many of the important global litigation trends, as discussed below. The Quinn Emanuel law firm’s July 2016 press release about the planned lawsuit can be found