The Law on personal insolvency in Lithuania (the “Law”) came into force in March 2013, following its adoption in May 2012. In light of the newly proposed amendments we find ourselves at a more than suitable time to draw a few initial conclusions on the introduction of the consumer insolvency in Lithuania.

In a landmark case, I Lithuanian courts for the first time opened secondary insolvency proceedings against a foreign debtor. The Lithuanian Court of Appeal (‘Court’) recently upheld the decision of the Court of first instance which opened secondary insolvency proceedings against a German debtor. The key question to be examined in this case was at which moment must the criteria for an ‘establishment’ by the European Insolvency Regulation - ‘EIR’) exist for Lithuanian courts to have international jurisdiction to open secondary insolvency proceedings.

Recently enacted changes to the Lithuanian Enterprise Bankruptcy Law (EBL) as well as a fresh initiative by the country’s Presidency to further amend the EBL merit a closer look. At the beginning of this year important changes came into effect significantly altering the process of selecting administrators for enterprise bankruptcies. As before, the court opening bankruptcy proceedings against a company must also appoint an administrator. What is new is that as of 1 January 2015 the bankruptcy administrator is selected randomly by a computer program.

Russia: On raising professional qualification requirements for insolvency practitioners. Russian insolvency legislation sets out certain requirements an insolvency practitioner has to satisfy before his appointment in an insolvency case can be approved by the court.

In July 2013 the Constitutional Court of Lithuania ruled on the constitutionality of various aspects of bank insolvency laws. Sebastian Okinczyc takes us through the ruling.