Corporate Insolvency: Employment and Pension Rights

We are delighted to announce that the new 7th edition of David Pollard’s book: Corporate Insolvency: Employment and Pension Rights has just been published by Bloomsbury Professional.

Since the 6th edition appeared in 2016, there have been continual changes in the areas dealt with in this book:

• the impact of the Corporate Insolvency and Governance Act 2020 (CIGA 2020), in particular:
  • the new Part A1 moratorium (inserted into IA 1986);
  • the new claim priority in a liquidation or administration following a moratorium; and
  • the new protections in relation to contracts for the supply of good and services (Ipso facto).

• the potential future impact of the changes made by the Pension Schemes Act 2021 (PSA 2021), including new criminal offences and financial penalties;
• Brexit impacts, in particular on pension schemes with overseas employers entering the PPF;
• the added secondary preferential debts to HMRC under the Finance Act 2020; and
• new administration disposal regulations (from April 2021).

This new 7th edition takes account of all these changes. New chapters have been added dealing with:

• priority of payments – the waterfall;
• the new Part A1 moratorium (inserted by CIGA 2020);
• ipso facto protections;
• third parties rights against insurers;
• IPs and pensions liability;
• PPF and voting rights;
• crimes and fines under PSA 2021; and
• CVAs and pensions (a new Part 15, with multiple chapters)

The aim of this book is to bridge the gap between what have generally been regarded as three separate legal disciplines. Legal practitioners, whether solicitors or barristers, have tended to specialise in one area only, whether it be pensions law, employment law or insolvency law. Each of these areas is covered by its own legal books and literature although the pensions area has seen the least by way of legal literature.

This book: Pensions Law / Employment Law ∩ Insolvency Law

This division into distinct specialisations has tended to mean that difficulties can arise at the stage where two or more areas meet. The purpose of this book is to draw out the legal principles applicable where employment law and pensions law interact with corporate insolvency law. The intersection outside insolvency between employment law and pensions law is dealt with in another book: Employment Law and Pensions (Bloomsbury Professional), 2016.

The previous, 6th edition, split the issues into two separate volumes, meant to be considered as a single work. For this Seventh edition, the work has moved back more clearly to a single volume.

Although a brief overview of employment law and insolvency principles is given, the basic law in each of the three areas concerned is dealt with in more depth in other, readily available, works. Instead, this book focuses on the application of the rules relating to corporate insolvency and how they impact on employees and pensions. For example, how is the position of employees affected by the appointment of an insolvency practitioner over their employing company? Who is liable and what priority is given to past or future claims? This simple and everyday question leads to a complex legal analysis.

This book will have succeeded if it brings out the difficulties that can arise in these three areas and gives practitioners a base on which to answer the questions that arise. Not least, it aims to point to the statutory and other materials applicable in this area.

David Pollard is a leading and highly experienced lawyer in the pensions field and related areas. He switched to practice as a barrister at the end of 2017, after 37 years’ practice as a solicitor, including 25 years as a partner at Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer. David’s previous books published by Bloomsbury include: Connected and Associated: Insolvency and Pensions Law, Employment Law and Pensions and Pensions, Contracts and Trusts: Legal Issues on Decision Making, and by Oxford University Press: The Law of Pension Trusts.

For more information and to purchase a copy of Corporate Insolvency: Employment and Pension Rights, please click here.

If you have any questions, please email marketing@wilberforce.co.uk