The High Court has quashed a company voluntary arrangement (CVA) entered into by the owner of the Miss Sixty and Energie brands. The dispute centered on a rental guarantee that the landlord Mourant had been given by Sixty UK’s Italian parent company, Sixty SpA, over the leases of Miss Sixty and Energie stores at a shopping centre. Under the terms of the CVA proposed by Sixty UK last April, Mourant lost the guarantee in return for just £300,000. If the company had instead gone into liquidation, then the guarantor’s obligations under the lease would have continued. The Court held that said there had been a “prima facie case of misconduct” after administrators were found to have unfairly sided with the retailer against their landlord Mourant, the owner of Liverpool’s Metquarter shopping centre.

The British Property Federation (BPF) welcomed the ruling, saying:

"This is of huge significance because it shows that immoral acts designed to let directors manage retailers into the ground, blame the landlord and walk away will not be tolerated by the courts. Common sense has won out and this will hopefully make future cases of firms cynically using insolvency laws less likely."