Esquire Realty Holdings Limited - First Guernsey "Pre-pack"

Alasdair Davidson, assisted by Jon Barclay, led the successful application in the matter of Esquire Realty Holdings Limited on 16 April 2014. This was the first occasion upon which the Guernsey Courts have had to consider an application for a company to be placed into administration in the context of an intended pre-packaged sale by the administrators of the company’s assets immediately thereafter (commonly known as a "pre-pack").

In his judgment the Bailiff, Richard Collas, provided important guidance as to the type of information that the Court would consider necessary for practitioners to place before the Court when considering such applications. In addition, judicial comment was made as to the importance of making of privacy orders in relation to such applications in order to protect sensitive and confidential commercial information and to reduce the risk of distress to those who might otherwise be affected by news of insolvency events - orders commonly used in trust matters but not used often in the corporate context.

In this particular application the insolvent company was at the apex of a wider health care group which, by bed space alone, was one of the top 10 providers of care to the vulnerable and elderly in the United Kingdom.