Section 103: General powers, duties and effect
275.Subsection (1) empowers the bank liquidator to do anything necessary or expedient for the pursuit of the objectives in section 99.
276.Subsections (2) to (5) provide that the powers and duties of a bank liquidator and the general process of winding up is in keeping with existing provisions of Part IV of the Insolvency Act 1986 by applying the general provisions relating to liquidators and winding up to bank liquidators and bank insolvency (subsection (2)).
277.In order to adhere to general insolvency law and practice, subsection (6) sets out an extensive table of applied provisions. Many of the existing sections of Part IV and other relevant sections of the Insolvency Act 1986 are applied directly to the bank insolvency procedure with minor modifications where necessary. Those modifications have been kept to a minimum, reflecting that the bank insolvency procedure has much in common with the process of an ordinary liquidation.
278.Changes have been made in order to support the unique objectives of the bank insolvency procedure and to reflect the roles of the Authorities and the FSCS in the early stages of the bank insolvency procedure up to the point that a full payment resolution has been passed.
279.As the bank liquidator can only be an insolvency practitioner, references to the Official Receiver have been removed or replaced throughout. The application, with modification, of section 135 of the Insolvency Act 1986 allows for the appointment of a provisional bank liquidator by the court in the period between the submission of an application for a bank insolvency order and the court hearing for the making of such an order.
280.An ordinary liquidator is able to bring action before the court to pursue certain antecedent recoveries such as transactions at an undervalue or unfair preferences made or given in specified periods prior to the commencement of the winding up proceedings. In order to support the high-level objectives of the special resolution regime, provisions have been made to prevent such actions being brought before the court by a bank liquidator where those relate to the prior exercise of any of the pre-insolvency stabilisation tools under Part 1 of the Act. This also applies to actions in respect of transactions defrauding creditors under section 423 of the Insolvency Act 1986.
