News

Britain’s local councils are going bust – or getting close to it – left, right and centre. Literally, since the parlous state of local government finances is being revealed almost daily in councils controlled by all three major political parties. Early examples of...

The sands of time are fast draining away towards the date of the next General Election. Arguably only this Autumn Statement and the Budget next March provide a beleaguered government with set-piece economic events that have the potential to change the political...

Two cheers would be a stretch, let alone three. Core inflation remains hard to shift, meaning UK interest rate cuts are some way off. The only surprise in October’s fall in the Consumer Prices Index was the size of the decline from 6.7% to 4.6%. It was always going to...

Soaring interest rates and stubborn inflation forced 2,315 businesses into insolvency in October 2023, up 18% on the same month last year and above pandemic levels. The vast majority (82%) were Creditors Voluntary Liquidations (CVLs) – directors throwing in the towel ...

Hot on the heels of 30-year old cryptocurrency king Sam “SBF” Bankman-Fried being found guilty by a New York jury of one of the biggest frauds in American history, City watchdogs the Prudential Regulation Authority (PRA) and the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) are...

Buchler Phillips is pleased to extend its core offering with a new, topical focus on sanctions expertise. Our appointment as Administrator to CargoLogicAir Limited, a highly profitable British business which suffered as an unintended consequence of sanctions against...

Sporty readers of a certain age will be familiar with a social stereotype of recent decades: the MAMIL – Middle Aged Man in Lycra. Often heading a queue of overtaking traffic at weekends, these cyclists clad in spray-on ‘technical’ apparel breathed new life into 21st...

When we gave our talk on this matter as part of the ICAEW's Restructuring & Insolvency Conference back in June, we were met with comments from many people in the profession expressing disbelief that the situations we described had actually occurred. How could...

The sands of time are fast running out on the current UK parliament. We have just witnessed what will almost certainly be the final set of Party Conferences before the next UK General Election. In theory this might take place as late as January 2025, but Conservative...

Recent figures suggest that starting, running and growing a small business for the long term has become an unappealing prospect. This is obviously worrying, since historically these acorns have developed into the Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) that form the...

Supply chain issues and other adverse factors affecting the UK logistics industry are well documented: driver shortages, fuel prices and the costs of environmental compliance are perhaps the most obvious. They came into sharp focus during the summer when major...

Has it really been 35 years? In some ways it seems like only yesterday that my fellow Arthur Andersen insolvency partner Peter Phillips and I set up shop in Mayfair. To set the scene in 1988: the Piper Alpha oil rig explosion had killed 167 and would rock the Lloyd’s...