Insights

London – October 4, 2023: Crowell & Moring U.K. LLP has been recommended in four practice areas in the Legal 500 United Kingdom 2024. In addition, partner Andrew Knight has been named as a leading individual for asset based lending. The firm’s full rankings can be viewed here.

London—October 13, 2021: Legal 500 has again listed Crowell & Moring as one of the top UK law firms in The Legal 500 UK 2021 for its asset-based lending work.

London – October 9, 2020: Legal 500 has listed Crowell & Moring as one of the top UK law firms in The Legal 500 UK 2021 for its asset based lending work.

On 29 June 2023, the long-awaited Financial Services and Markets Act 2023 (the “Act”) received Royal Assent, clearing the Act’s final hurdle prior to its implementation. The Act is the framework for the UK’s post-Brexit financial legislative and regulatory landscape.  Focusing on the promotion of competition, innovation and investor protections, it hopes to ensure the UK’s continued leadership in the global economy by providing “a smarter financial services framework”. While the Act is 349 pages in length, we have set out some of the key themes and regulations currently making headlines.

The Finance Bill 2020 received Royal Assent on 22 July 2020 and became the Finance Act 2020, reintroducing the heavily contested measure of restoring HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) as a secondary preferential creditor on insolvency (Crown Preference). Crown Preference will therefore be reintroduced from 1 December 2020. Its reintroduction will affect recoveries under both new and existing floating charges.

In these unprecedented times, all businesses will be facing issues they have never encountered before. The disruption caused by the measures imposed to combat the COVID-19 outbreak are significant and wide-reaching, impacting every business and its suppliers, customers, workforce, investors and lenders. Companies find themselves operating in the shadow of potential bankruptcies along the supply chain, in their customer base and their trading partners globally and are facing a myriad of issues related to business disruption, salvaging relationships and restructuring liabilities and business structures to facilitate ongoing trading. To ensure an ability to recommence trading when the current lockdown is over, clients may need to take a number of steps to keep their business alive. Some of the key questions arising are set out below:

College member Scott Lessne and Andrew Knight will be participating in this annual seminar sponsored by the College. The topic, "Distributed Ledger Technology and the UCC", will feature a working session and discussion lead by Professors Charles W. "Chuck" Mooney, Jr., University of Pennsylvania Law School, and Carla L. Reyes, Michigan State University College of Law.

This program will explore legal, business and practical similarities and differences in cross-border asset-based lending transactions with a focus on Canada, England and the United States.