A recent High Court decision sets out the strict requirements to be met when applying for a stay of a winding up. In this case, despite there being no objections raised by the liquidator or the other parties, the Court would still scrutinise the evidence before deciding whether to grant the stay or not.

In the Grounds of Judgment dated 2 June 2015 for the case of Percetakan Warni Sdn Bhd, the Court dismissed an application by a shareholder under section 243 of the Companies Act 1965 for a permanent stay of a winding up. This is despite the Petitioner and the Liquidator (being the Official Receiver)) not objecting to the application and where the Respondent (through its shareholder) would be paying off the debts of the Respondent company.

Of interest was that there were uncommon features which the Court insisted should have been met for such a section 243 stay application. The Court took the step of carefully assessing whether all of these requirements were met:

1. In addition to the established section 243 principles from the leading Federal Court case of Vijayalakshmi and other cases, the Court held that there must be evidence to demonstrate the company will be commercially solvent after the section 243 stay. It is not sufficient to show assets outweigh the liabilities. Commercial solvency can be shown through injection of funds from a “white knight”, evidence that the company will be gaining a lucrative contract, or an expert opinion from a restructuring expert or accountant on the likelihood of the company’s commercial solvency. There was no evidence of any of these.
2. The company had earlier been granted an ad interim stay of the winding up, since the OR had no objections to that. However, there was no evidence that the Board had even carried on the business or operated the company throughout that ad interim stay.
3. The Court also scrutinised the Statement of Affairs filed by the directors and compared it with the Liquidator’s report filed by the OR. There were inconsistencies in the directors’ Statement of Affairs and not sufficient disclosure. While no objections were raised by the other parties, the Court held that this showed that the applicant’s evidence was not credible.
4. The application also did not exhibit the latest audited accounts of the company. The last audited accounts were in 2010 and no updated financial information was provided by the applicant.

As these requirements were not met, the stay application was dismissed. So be aware of the possibly stringent requirements when seeking for a section 243 stay of a winding up Order. These additional requirements would also provide good grounds to object to a section 243 stay application.