Covid-19 tips balance further in favour of shareholders over creditors

The raised bar for proving insolvency is making creditor protection harder.

Published Fri, Oct 30, 2020 · 09:50 PM

THE S&P 500 has rebounded by more than 30 per cent since its March nadir, breaching its five-year pre-Covid high, in seeming defiance of the bad news linked to Covid-19.

Is the market's upward trajectory in these trying times so inexplicable? Commentators point to spooked investors not knowing where else to park their liquidity, and to tech stocks being the major beneficiaries. But one other factor may be at play: shifts in the creditor-debtor tug of war that have been brought into starker relief.

The company as we know it

The concept of a company is simple enough at its core. A separate legal entity from its shareholders, a company allows businessmen to conduct business through a c…