Court approves £1.6 million Float Capital liquidator fee estimates

The High Court has approved fee estimates totalling about £1.64 million for the joint liquidators of Float Capital Limited, ruling on a novel remuneration issue after the company’s dominant creditor was unable to approve the fees because of a conflict of interest.

Chief Insolvency and Companies Court Judge Briggs approved a £362,986.50 estimate for Geoffrey Bouchier of Kroll Advisory and a £1.27 million estimate for Ben Woodthorpe of S&W Partners. Float Capital, an unregulated corporate lender, entered administration in May 2024 and moved into creditors’ voluntary liquidation that August. Its main asset was a portfolio of 22 loans with a face value of about £12.09 million, although much of the associated security was found to be invalid or unenforceable.

The complication arose because Philips Trust Corporation Limited, which holds about 98% of Float Capital’s unsecured claims, is itself in administration and Bouchier is one of its joint administrators. The Court agreed that the normal creditor approval route was effectively unavailable.

For Bouchier, whose remuneration basis had not previously been fixed, the Court approved a time-cost basis under rule 18.23. His application was issued on the final day of the rule’s 18-month deadline, prompting Judge Briggs to caution practitioners against leaving similar applications until the last moment.

Woodthorpe’s time-cost basis had carried over automatically from the administration, meaning rule 18.23 was unavailable. Instead, the Court held that rules 18.24 and 18.28 allowed it to increase the amount of remuneration by approving a higher fee estimate, a point Judge Briggs said had not previously been addressed by authority.

The Court stressed that the estimates are ceilings, not targets. Aggregate professional fees could approach £1.87 million, against realisations of about £850,000 at the time of the hearing, and any amounts above the approved estimates will require further Court approval.

Read the decision here.

Simon Passfield KC of Guildhall Chambers (instructed by Squire Patton Boggs) acted for the liquidators.