PERINTIS AMANAH BERHAD

On the court record

A company litigating both the reopening of default judgments under the Rules of Court 2012 and the statutory insolvency tests of the Companies Act 2016.

Perintis Amanah Berhad appears in the corpus across civil-procedure and insolvency proceedings that turn on default judgments and the statutory tests for winding up.

Two of the matters are appeals arising from the familiar scenario in which a judgment in default is entered against a defendant, who then applies to set it aside so that the dispute may be decided on its merits. In one, the company, as appellant, challenged a Sessions Court's refusal to set aside a default judgment entered against it; the High Court described the exercise as a delicate balancing act between upholding procedural discipline under the Rules of Court 2012 and ensuring that justice is not sacrificed to technicality, and framed the central question as whether it should intervene and overturn the lower court's refusal. In the other, the company again appealed the dismissal of an application to set aside a default judgment, this time as the second defendant below, the claim against the first defendant having been withdrawn and the appeal concerning only the judgment against it.

The third matter placed the company in an insolvency setting. The proceeding examined the presumption of insolvency, or deeming provision, and whether a failure to satisfy or compound a statutory notice of demand within twenty-one days triggered the presumption of inability to pay debts under section 466(1)(a) of the Companies Act 2016, read with the winding-up ground in section 465(1)(e). The court's framing distinguished commercial insolvency, tested by cash flow, from balance-sheet insolvency, and considered the validity of service, the effect of an unrebutted allegation where no affidavit in opposition was filed, and whether a dispute over the precise amount owed amounts to a bona fide dispute of the debt.

Together the matters show a company litigating both the reopening of default judgments and the statutory thresholds of corporate insolvency. Outcomes are stated as the courts recorded them.