The Directive (EU) 2019/1023 on preventive restructuring frameworks ("the Directive") was passed on 20 June 2019 bringing about a change of paradigm in corporate restructuring. A change that should allow the States of the European Union to catch up with countries adhering to the Anglo-Saxon model, both in restructuring and insolvency matters and also upstream, in financial matters, due to the influence of the insolvency legislation on the provision of credit ex-ante.

COVID-19 and the correspondent lockdown measures have affected our lives in many ways. From a legal perspective, it has proven that jurisdictions that were already adapted to technology have provided a better response in the administration of justice.

In January 2020, the world woke up facing a phenomenon that some had predicted but few wanted to hear about or were prepared for: a global pandemic, now commonly called the COVID-19 crisis. Immediately, many economists were convinced that the world was heading for a stock market crash and an economic crisis. They were right. The stock market sank, and all countries that imposed strict lockdown measures face a significant contraction in their GDP.

The past experience with the European Insolvency Regulation (2000) has shown that even if all the courts in the Member States are only bound by decisions delivered at the EU level by the CJEU, all interested parties involved in an insolvency case (namely courts, insolvency practitioners, chartered accountants, lawyers and even debtors themselves in certain cases) may find it of great interest to look at the decisions made by other courts in other Member States for guidance.

On 6 December 2019, the UNCITRAL held, in its Vienna Headquarters, a Colloquium on Asset Tracing and Recovery, under the auspices of its Working Group V (Insolvency Law). More than one hundred professionals dealing with asset tracing and recovery were in attendance (See Paul Omar’s report of the wider meeting in our News section of this edition).

The purpose of the Colloquium was to kick off a process of debate and analysis among practitioners and academics of different jurisdictions.

At the time of writing, our personal and professional life has totally changed since the COVID-19 emerged. INSOL Europe has just announced that many of our events are postponed.

Countries, one after another, imposed restrictions on citizens’ free movement and banned travels. Offices, courts, schools, and universities are being closed everywhere… Lockdowns spread across the world, including the US and India. In order to fight this highly contagious respiratory illness, the lockdowns are being extended and reinforced…

Cyber risk is increasingly present, with impacts that are not clearly identified, but very real and with potentially heavy consequences for a company’s activities.

In the current context, interstate tensions in the cyber space are ever growing and the number of collateral victims – human and industrial – is increasing. As an illustration, the NotPetya malware, which originated from Ukraine and spread around the world, transited via widely used accounting software in Ukraine.

Updated Insolvency Laws have been published in 2019 for Switzerland. We are grateful to Prof. Dr. Rodrigo Rodriguez, Rechtsanwalt Wissenschaftlicher Berater (Eidgenössisches Justiz und Polizeidepartement EJPD, Bundesamt für Justiz BJ, Direktionsbereich Privatrecht) for sharing this information. Twelve countries remain covered so far: Belgium, Bulgaria, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and The Netherlands.

In our last article, building upon presentations by the Anti-Fraud Forum, the authors discussed steps European-based insolvency officeholders could take in order to obtain recognition and assistance from the British Virgin Islands, Cayman Islands, Guernsey or Jersey (which, for convenience, we called the four Crown Dependencies and Overseas Territories (CDOTs).

In this article, we build upon that foundation by examining some of the more common mechanisms for obtaining information in the CDOTs.

Early Warning Europe is a project to enhance entrepreneurship and growth of SMEs across Europe. They work on policies related to insolvency, developing and testing innovative methods and helping companies in difficulty by setting up early warning mechanisms.