Malaysian Industrial Development Finance Berhad

On the court record

A financing institution whose matters map restructuring and enforcement: participation in a scheme of arrangement, the bankruptcy-notice machinery, and the leave requirement to execute a judgment after the lapse of time.

Malaysian Industrial Development Finance Berhad (MIDF), a financing institution, appears in the corpus in scheme-of-arrangement, execution and bankruptcy matters, and its appearances reflect a creditor's position in corporate restructuring and enforcement. In Court of Appeal matters connected to a company in liquidation, the court addressed an application for leave to convene a meeting of a scheme of creditors under section 366(1) of the Companies Act 2016 and an application to set aside the order granting leave, considering whether the leave application was an abuse of process because not made bona fide, and whether the High Court judge had erred in dismissing the setting-aside application on the facts before him.

As a judgment creditor, MIDF, with other banks, appears in bankruptcy proceedings where a judgment debtor sought to set aside a bankruptcy notice and to stay the proceedings pending an appeal in the main suit, the court dealing with the two appeals and the stay application together. In an earlier matter the court addressed the execution of a judgment after six years under Order 46 rules 2 and 3 of the Rules of Court 2012 and section 6(3) of the Limitation Act 1953, drawing the distinction between bankruptcy proceedings and execution proceedings and requiring cogent reasons for the delay, holding that pursuing bankruptcy did not excuse a failure to attempt the prescribed modes of execution.

For a reader, the cluster maps a lender's restructuring and enforcement litigation: participation in a scheme of arrangement, the bankruptcy-notice machinery, and the leave requirement to execute a judgment after the lapse of time. The institution and corporate parties are named as they appear on the record; the individual judgment debtors are referred to by their procedural role only. The institution's appearances show a lender operating across the restructuring and enforcement spectrum: participating in a debtor's scheme of arrangement while guarding against its abuse, pursuing bankruptcy against a judgment debtor, and confronting the leave requirement and limitation constraints that attend the execution of a judgment after the lapse of time. The recurring insistence on cogent reasons for delay disciplines the enforcement process.