Ultimate beneficial holders of offshore bonds are contingent creditors for winding up proceedings

Abstract

There has been a recent flurry of decisions from offshore common law jurisdictions dealing with the issue of whether the ultimate beneficial holder in a New York law bond structure has standing as a “ contingent creditor” to present a winding up petition (or the local procedural equivalent) against the Issuer. First-instance courts in Bermuda, the Cayman Islands, and Hong Kong have held that the ultimate beneficial holder is not a contingent creditor for this purpose. The BVI Commercial Court has held that it is. The BVI decision had been appealed by the company, but this has now been withdrawn. In view of the lack of consideration of the issue at the appellate level, this article examines the reasoning of the decisions in detail. It concludes that the approach taken in the BVI is correct. The approach taken in the other jurisdictions is flawed, based on an erroneous conflation between privity of contract and creditor status and relies on unsound case law that has been rejected by more recent authority from the UK Supreme Court.