A year dominated by an unforeseen pandemic with unprecedented economic turmoil, the NZ political scene tipped on its head with farmers strategically voting Labour in order to fight off unwanted Greens policies…
Shareholders Extracting Assets from Privately Owned Companies
To what extent can shareholders of a privately owned company extract assets from the company and thereby remove them from potential exposure to the company's creditors…
Is your Trust still Needed
The advantages offered by trusts are far reduced from what they used to be. For many, there is no longer any need for a trust at all…
Tax Rules for Related Party Debt Financing
Media attention has highlighted the extent to which large multi-nationals have historically escaped New Zealand tax on their earnings here…
Company Restructuring Options
Motivation for company restructuring might be to survive, revive or thrive. The focus in this article is on restructuring in order to survive…
Corporate Liquidations – Are you Exposed?
Suppliers to companies that fall into liquidation are exposed to a liquidator clawing back amounts paid to them…
Is your Trust Effective Against claims on You?
If you regard the assets in your trust as being at your disposal in the same way as the balance in your bank account…
Buying a Business out of Receivership
Buying a business out of receivership involves vastly different features to customary business purchases. This article discusses the issues for a purchaser that are unique to a target company that is in receivership…
Protections for Owner Operated Companies
There are steps open to you as owner of a trading company to protect your investment in the company…
Capital Raising Steps
Capital raising for privately owned companies necessarily carries a tension between the amount of cash needed and the cost of obtaining it. The greater the equity in the company that is conceded, the greater the cost…
Supplying a Company that is in Receivership
What should you do, as a supplier of goods or services where your customer is placed into receivership? How does the receivership affect a landlord which has granted a lease to a company that has gone into receivership…
Strategies for Companies in Insolvency
The need to deal with creditors
The number one priority for companies with viable businesses that are unable to meet their debts is to deal with their creditors…
Issue 35 - Newsletter - 6 March 2020
A raft of tax proposals herald the new decade, including rules to allocate the proceeds received upon sale of a business across the transferred assets…
December 2019 – Commercial and Tax Edition
Welcome to our final newsletter for 2019. In between distractions of school prize givings, end of year work functions and vexatious litigation (timed to create maximum impact), I trust you find the articles below of interest…
Trusts: The Danger of Accumulating Income
Tax planning for a trust will have failed where the trust has become a non-complying trust (NCT). That is because distributions from a NCT are taxed at 45% in the hands of a beneficiary unless an exception applies...
September 2019 – Commercial Edition
Companies commonly collapse leaving behind hundreds of thousands of dollars (or millions in some cases) owed to creditors yet they manage to rise from the ashes and trade on in a new company with a clean slate...
September 2019 – Tax Edition
Hybrid mismatch rules were introduced last year and will apply to many cross border financing arrangements...
March 2019 – Tax Edition
Eric Watson's Cullen Investment case and Frucor's tax avoidance case are profoundly interesting in their own right...
March 2019 – Commercial Edition
Last week's $36m damages award against the directors of failed Mainzeal Construction, including Dame Jenny Shipley, offers many lessons...
December 2018 – Tax Edition
Welcome to our final tax newsletter for 2018. Some of you may know that I have assisted the Law Society with submissions to the Tax Working Group (TWG)...