Corporate Insolvency and Governance Bill

Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts Excerpts

Report stage & Report stage (Hansard) & Report stage (Hansard): House of Lords
Tuesday 23rd June 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Kramer (LD) [V]]

My Lords, my name is added to Amendment 14. I cannot better the speeches from my noble friend Lady Bowles and the noble Baroness, Lady Altmann. However, I ought to add a few words, because I am probably one of a small number of people in this House and the other place who have been a creditor to a company taken through the Chapter 11 process in the United States, as I was when I worked there for a major US bank.

It is not exceptional behaviour but standard practice to seek ways to accelerate payment to get it into the moratorium period. I would have been considered remiss in my responsibilities had I not made sure that, in the various legal contracts in which lending was arranged, clauses existed that would enable me to achieve that acceleration.

As I also know from my own experience, acceleration is not the only issue; there is also the ability to make sure that a bank can take security when a company finds itself entering into financial crisis. That helps to move the financial institution’s debts much higher up the food chain. I hope that the language in the various amendments that try to deal with this problem is understood as dealing with the issue of security as a mechanism for acceleration, and not just clauses which very directly achieve acceleration.

[Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts (Con)]

My Lords, I put my name to Amendment 14. Before I speak to it, I draw the House’s attention to my entry in the register of interests.

I tabled a similar amendment in Committee, looking at how financial institutions and banks might game the system. When I listened to him, my noble friend the Minister seemed to give a positive answer—for which, many thanks—but when one reads col. 2094 of the Committee stage debate on 16 June, the words are not quite as strong as I had hoped. So I support Amendment 14 and want to press my noble friend a little further, for two reasons.

The first is what I might call the Pepper v Hart reason. Courts can go to debates in your Lordships’ House and the House of Commons and use Ministerial Statements and replies to discern what Parliament’s wish was when legislation was passed. Not a lot was said in the House of Commons, because it all went through in a single day, but the words of the Lords Minister, the noble Lord, Lord Callanan, have been quoted extensively and will be so in future. He will probably have a starring role in a number of law cases in the years ahead. So I hope, as we come to the dénouement of the Bill, that he will be able to lay out the case clearly, cogently and simply.

Insolvency can seem as dry as dust, but it is about people. It is about men and women who have struggled and given months and years of their life to building up a business, only to see it collapse before their eyes. Sometimes it is because of their incompetence, but often it is because of events over which they have absolutely no control, such as the pandemic. We therefore owe it to people like them to have absolute clarity about their position, their rights and their responsibilities.

I will go back to the real-life example I gave in Committee; I ask my noble friend the Minister to boil down his response when he comes to reply. A struggling company; a £10 million term loan; £1 million is in default, and a pre-moratorium demand has been made. The company goes into the moratorium. Of course, the £1 million is a pre-moratorium debt and is therefore covered, but that demand is a default on the whole loan. Therefore, using the financial services cover, the bank says, “I want the £9 million, thank you very much.” Has that hole been blocked in what my noble friend is putting before the House today? I thought he said that he was going to, but this is quite complicated. It would be helpful for the House, and indeed for the law courts in future, if he could make it clear that that is the case—that is, that banks cannot game the system and use a pre-moratorium event that is protected under the moratorium to enforce claims under the moratorium because they are financial services.

My second question concerns what I call the “Gulag issue”. In real life, in the example I gave, the act of default will mean that the company’s loan moves from its normal relationships to what is known as the “workout division”. Notwithstanding the sensitivities of the noble Baroness, Lady Kramer, the workout division is not a place for sensitive souls. It is charged, incentivised and tasked with enforcing the rights of the lender: the bank. Banking agreements have a good many pages of closely packed print, with all sorts of terms and conditions. So many times I have heard people say, “I got 1% off my interest rate and did not think about the other terms.” If your business is going to be successful because you are paying 1% less, you are in the wrong business. It is the terms and conditions that you need to look out for.

Let me give an example of how that might work. I invite noble Lords to look at their overdraft statement when they go home tonight. It will say something like this: “You will be charged 3.5% or 4% above the bank’s base rate for the time being”—what the bank’s base rate is is a good question in itself—“but for unauthorised overdrafts you will be charged 19%.” Deep in the terms and conditions for the company I am talking about, there will be a similar clause. When you default, your interest rate goes up. Do the maths. That £10 million at 19% less the 4% that you were expecting to pay—making 15%—equals £1.5 million a year, or £30,000 a week. These are the sorts of things, and there are many other ways in which banks can enforce their conditions.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Callanan]

My Lords, the Government have listened carefully to the concerns raised by noble Lords in Committee and elsewhere.

Where used appropriately, pre-pack sales can perform a useful rescue function. In some instances, sales to connected parties are beneficial. However, we accept that the nature of the transaction and the speed with which it is carried out might also provide some opportunities for mischief. This could particularly be the case during the current crisis. The Government acknowledge that there may be a risk of an increase in the use of pre-pack sales, which could adversely affect businesses already struggling as a result of Covid-19.

The Government therefore propose amendments to revive the power, which expired in May 2020, to regulate sales in administration to connected parties, and to introduce a similar power in Northern Ireland. These government amendments will revive paragraph 60A in Schedule B1 to the Insolvency Act 1986. This will enable the Secretary of State to make regulations to prohibit or impose requirements or conditions in relation to the sale of property of a company by the administrator to a connected person, in circumstances specified in the regulations. This power will expire at the end of June 2021, unless it is previously exercised.

The amendments will also insert a new power in Schedule B1 to the Insolvency (Northern Ireland) Order 1989 to enable similar regulation of sales to a connected person in Northern Ireland. This power will also be time limited until the end of June 2021, unless previously exercised. Regulations made under the power in Northern Ireland must be laid in draft and approved by a resolution of the Northern Ireland Assembly. And we are going further: ahead of using the power, we will publish the Government’s review of existing voluntary measures in respect of pre-pack sales this summer to help further inform the public debate on this issue. I beg to move.

[Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts]

My Lords, I have Amendment 45 in this group but, before I speak on it, perhaps I may say that I entirely support the Government’s Amendments 37 and 38. They are very sensible and have my unequivocal support.

I turn to Amendment 45, to which the noble Lord, Lord Vaux, the noble Baroness, Lady Bowles, and my noble friend Lady Altmann have added their names. I am most grateful to them and indeed to other noble Lords all across the House who have been in touch with me to say that it seems a sensible way of proceeding. We discussed this matter at length last Wednesday. I shall try to avoid repeating myself, although of course I need to fill in the story for those who have just joined in at this stage.

Like my noble friends Lord Callanan, Lord Leigh and Lord Holmes of Richmond, I recognise that pre-packs have their uses. As I said in the debate last week, they are a useful spanner in the toolbox of the insolvency practitioner. However, they are open to serious abuse, as my noble friend Lord Callanan admitted a moment ago. Let us quickly run through a real-life example, and here I will slightly repeat what I said last week.

I ask noble Lords to imagine the following. You are a director of a company that is struggling because of past operating losses, which have led to large debts being accumulated; or perhaps it is a very old, established engineering or industrial company that has a long tail of pension liabilities that get increasingly heavy. Insolvency and administration loom over you, but you and your fellow directors feel that somewhere in the business is a really profitable activity. However, the company is worth saving only if you can get rid of all your debts. Therefore, you, as a group of directors—maybe with some associates—find an administrator and say that you would like to make an offer for the bits that you want. That offer might be very substantial but, equally, it might be £1 or £1,000. That is the key to the problem that we are trying to tackle here. Nobody can say that anything is wrong where a fair-value, full-price offer is made.

You make a nominal offer on, say, a Friday, which means that the company is put into administration over the weekend. On Monday, you advertise it in the newspapers and after four days, if the administrator has had no competing offers, he or she can say that they have tested the market and have obtained a fair price. It is of course vanishingly unlikely, although possible, that within four days anybody will be able to come up with an offer de novo, from a standing start. Your group, having paid the money to the administrator, is now the proud owner of a company that is without all its liabilities to suppliers great and small, local and national, as well as to the Pension Protection Fund—but you might be the very people who led the company to the edge of disaster in the first place.

Many in your Lordships’ House would ask “How could this possibly be?” It has an awfully superficially attractive political ring to it. A Minister, a councillor or a Member of Parliament can get up and say, “Look, I’ve just saved 300 jobs.” That sounds awfully good, but nobody weighs on the scale what is happening elsewhere. For every debt that you have written off, another company loses money. It might be a small local supplier that might have to make redundancies of its own and might itself, in extremis, go into receivership. There is also the general damage to the local economy, as there is to the Pension Protection Fund. This has always seemed to me, at least, to be a very unfair way of proceeding unless it is properly supervised.

--- Later in debate ---

Moved by

[Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts]

45: After Clause 17, insert the following new Clause—
“Review of pre-pack transactions
In Schedule B1 to the Insolvency Act 1986, after paragraph 74 insert—“Review of pre-pack transactions(1) The assets of a company may not be transferred under the terms of a pre-pack transaction unless the proposed purchaser has obtained an opinion in writing from a member of the pre-pack pool that the transaction is not unreasonable.(2) In this paragraph, a “pre-pack transaction” means a transaction which is negotiated before a company enters administration, and under which all or a substantial part of the company’s assets are sold to an associate on or shortly after the appointment of an administrator.(3) For the purposes of sub-paragraph (2), “associate” has the meaning given in section 435 of the Insolvency Act 1986.””Member’s explanatory statement
This new Clause requires a positive opinion to be obtained from a member of the pre-pack pool before a company enters into a pre-pack transaction. The pre-pack pool is an independent body of experienced business people set up in response to the recommendations of Teresa Graham’s report.

[Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts]

My Lords, I listened carefully to what my noble friend said a few minutes ago. He will not expect me to be delighted by it—it was very disappointing. Perhaps I may deal with the objections that he raised, as it is worth while to do so briefly.

My noble friend gave three reasons why the pre-pack pool should not be given the powers to control or regulate pre-pack transactions. The first was that, where the creditors wanted to go ahead, a transaction could be frustrated by a pre-pack pool member saying that it could not. His officials should get a life. The creditors are at the bottom of a waterfall and, if they say that they want it to go ahead, it should, although it will probably never happen in that way. Also, my amendment refers to the transaction not being “unreasonable”: it sets a very low bar.

Secondly, my noble friend said that the definition of “associate” was faulty. I have no pride in this. If he changed the definition of “associate”, I would accept that. He has the definition in his hands and can do with it what he wishes.

Thirdly, why did the Government set up a single pre-pack pool if they wanted only a single source of permissions? It was perfectly simple. It is worth noting that the pool is set up by professional bodies. When, a week ago, I said that there were conflicts of interest in the appointment of monitors, he said to me, “No, we don’t need to worry about that because it is run by professional bodies, and they will make sure that they have codes of conduct, which means that there will not be conflicts of interest. Therefore, I should not accept your amendment.” That applies just as much to the pre-pack pool, which is the product of a series of highly respected professional bodies.

My noble friend also said—I was delighted to hear this—that those running the Pension Protection Fund have said that there had been no trouble with pre-packs. Long may that last.

My noble friend also said that a review would be available this summer. However, we do not need a review; we need somebody in charge to do something while we come out of a pandemic. That is the whole purpose of my amendment. We are not looking for a review; we are looking for something better than the pre-pack pool to be put in place. To be fair to the Government and to my noble friend, the chances of the Government being able to find the time to produce this important but small reform with everything else that is going on are vanishingly small. Therefore, we will be living with the situation where pre-packs are unregulated post the collapse of the pre-pack pool.

To come to the point, I want to keep the pre-pack pool in existence, and that is what my amendment is about. It is not about politics; it is about good business practice. It is about fairness and about helping the deserving case and stopping the crooked one. It is about protecting firms and suppliers from being ripped off, and it is about assisting the Pension Protection Fund.

I was very sad to hear the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson, whom I have always found to be a man of discerning judgment, speaking on behalf of the Labour Party and saying that he could not support the amendment. Instead, he is creeping away from the sound of the battle and covering himself with the fig-leaf that somehow we should not endow non-statutory bodies with statutory powers. If that is a big constitutional point, we might have heard about it when he spoke about this at earlier stages of the Bill.

In conclusion, those who read their Damon Runyon will be familiar with a character called Harry the Horse, whose catchphrase was, “Put up or shut up”. After 15 years on this subject, during which we have had no real action from the Government, the time has come for those of us who believe that fairness is what we should be aiming for to “put up”. I beg leave to test the opinion of the House.