The Privy Council’s decision in Byers v Chen Ningning [2021] UKPC 4 reiterates certain key points of law on the director’s fiduciary duty to the company. A director who knows that a fellow director is acting in breach of duty or that an employee is misapplying the assets of the company must take reasonable steps to prevent that from happening.
In the High Court decision of Re SG & Sons Sdn Bhd (grounds of judgment dated 10 February 2021), the Court has confirmed that the local authority’s assessment rates is not a priority debt in a winding up.
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In summary, Malaysia’s winding up moratorium period came to an end on 31 December 2020. However, the RM50,000 minimum threshold is now maintained up to 31 March 2021. Continue reading
We end the year by looking back at the most-read articles on The Malaysian Lawyer in the year 2020. Thank you to the readers for all the support and for dropping by this site of ours.
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Featured below are our five most-read articles in 2020. Perhaps consistent with the challenging times of 2020, four out of the five articles deal with some form of closing down or retrenchment Continue reading
The Federal Court in its grounds of judgment dated 21 May 2020 Dubon Berhad (in liquidation) v Wisma Cosway Management Corporation held that fees due to a management corporation or a joint management body under the Strata Management Act is not a secured debt. Such fees are a pure unsecured debt within the insolvency regime. This will bring clarity for a liquidator of a company which is an owner of a strata property.
In my earlier post, arising from COVID-19, I had written about the Companies Commission of Malaysia (SSM) providing seven reliefs for companies. One of them is a temporary winding up protection for six months and the increase to the debt threshold to above RM50,000 in the statutory demand.
First, the Minister of Domestic Trade and Consumer Affairs (being the relevant Minister under the Companies Act 2016) has now exercised his powers under section 615 of the CA 2016 and gazetted the Companies (Exemption) (No. 2) Order 2020, which I will refer to as Exemption Order No. 2. This provides for the six-month period to respond to a statutory demand.
Second, the Minister has also issued the direction under section 466(1)(a) of the CA 2016 to prescribe the threshold amount to above RM50,000.
Please note that Exemption Order No. 2 has revoked the earlier Companies (Exemption) Order 2020, which I will refer to as the Exemption Order No. 1.
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