EUROPEAN UPDATE: (citation: Adam Gallagher, First Impressions on the Use of the New Belgian Restructuring Legislation, XXIX ABI Journal No. 6: 38-39, 73, July/August 2010) - Adam Gallagher

One general chapter. This chapter looks at whether "loan-to-own" is Europe's latest acquisition. Country question and answer chapters. These provide a broad overview of common issues in corporate recovery and insolvency in 35 jurisdictions.

Last week the High Court of England and Wales revoked a company voluntary arrangement (CVA) promoted by retailer Miss Sixty in a damning judgment that called into question the conduct of the practitioners involved. The case of Mourant & Co Trustees Limited v Sixty UK Limited (in administration) [2010] could end so-called guarantee stripping – where the CVA purports to discharge guarantees given by a third party – and provide powerful ammunition to landlords seeking to negotiate future CVAs with tenant companies.

With expensive accounting rules, an increased threat of litigation and hundreds of millions of dollars in fines for some firms, the once prestigious New York Stock Exchange and other American markets have become unattractive to Germany's biggest companies. Daimler and Deutsche Telekom have fled this year and the few remaining are likely to follow, Spiegel Online reported. On June 18, the symbol of the German company Deutsche Telekom, DT, made its last run across the ticker at the New York Stock Exchange.

As explained in our update of December 2009 (which you can view here), a bar date of 31 December 2010 has been set for submitting unsecured claims in the administration of LBIE. The administrators have now provided details of how claims should be submitted via a "creditor portal" website set up for this purpose.

The planned stress tests of European banks could be tougher than first thought.

It is registered in Luxembourg, the “offshore” domicile of many hedge funds. It has hundreds of billions of euros with which to place macroeconomic bets. And from July 1st the newly formed European Financial Stability Facility, the special-purpose vehicle (SPV) set up to support ailing euro-zone countries, is even being run by a former hedgie. But this is one fund that will never short its investments, The Economist reported. Klaus Regling owes his appointment as the SPV’s chief executive to his nationality as well as his expertise.

Germany's economy is booming thanks to a rapid recovery of global exports. But Europe isn't out of the woods yet. Few know exactly what nasty surprises might be lurking on bank balance sheets across the Continent -- and stress tests might not be enough to reveal them, Spiegel Online reported. A high-profile stress test of German banks could mean even more stress for an industry that currently needs mutual trust and tranquility more than anything.

Countries such as Greece are experiencing what African countries experienced in most of the 1980s and ’90s — IMF-led structural adjustment programmes, which forced governments to cut spending by eliminating subsidies to various sectors and implementing strict fiscal retrenchment, the Daily Nation reported in a commentary. This “shock therapy” was expected to reduce government deficits and make countries economically stable. But as many African governments can attest, this therapy had mixed results at best, and disastrous consequences at worst.