A recurring issue concerning directors’ duties is the question whether or not directors have duties to their company’s creditors when the company is in the “zone of insolvency.” In an interesting recent decision, the U.K. Supreme Court addressed the duty of directors to creditors when their company becomes insolvent or when it approaches or is at risk of insolvency. In a case in which it decided that the directors for the company before the Court were not liable, the Court ruled that the creditor duty may arise not only when the company is insolvent but when it is “bordering on insolvency,” though the creditor duty does not become paramount until insolvency is “inevitable.” The Court’s October 5, 2022 decision in BTI 204 LLC v. Sequana SA can be found here. The Press Summary of the Court’s Judgement can be found here.
Continue Reading U.K. Supreme Court Addresses Directors’ Duties for Companies “Bordering on Insolvency”

del1In a detailed May 4, 2015 opinion (here), Vice Chancellor Travis Laster of the Delaware Chancery Court extensively reviewed the rights of an insolvent company’s creditors to pursue derivative claims against the company’s directors. As Francis Pileggi put it in a May 6, 2015 post on his Delaware Corporate and Commercial Litigation blog

seal delA question that frequently recurs is whether or not directors of insolvent companies have fiduciary duties to creditors. Creditors often attempt to argue that as companies move into the “zone of insolvency,” directors’ duties move from the company’s shareholders to the company’s creditors. While courts have discredited this theory, creditors nevertheless seek to raise this