A payment by a third party to a creditor of an insolvent company, even if authorised or ratified by the insolvent company, is not an unfair preference under s 588FA(1)(b) unless the payment diminishes the assets of the insolvent company available to creditors — that is, unless the payment is from money or assets to which the company is entitled. Authorisation or ratification by the debtor company suffices to make it a party to the transaction under s 588FA(1)(a), but this is a separate and insufficient condition for establishing that the payment was received 'from the company'. The good faith defence under s 588FG(2) requires the creditor to establish a negative — that the matters appreciated by the creditor were insufficient to induce a suspicion of insolvency — and the existence of winding up proceedings, overdue debts, and evidence of a need for cash injections to arrest outstanding creditor claims will ordinarily defeat that defence.
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