One of the most hotly debated topics in the insolvency world in the last few years has been the insolvency of the groups of companies. Romania introduced an entire chapter on the insolvency of groups of companies in the major overhaul of the insolvency legislation that took place in the summer of 2014 i.e. Law no.85/2014 on prevention of insolvency and insolvency proceedings.

The Decree-law No. 26/2015 of 6 February, 2015 entered into force on 3 March 2015.

Insolvency legislation reform in the country began back in 1997 when the new bankruptcy law was enacted and published in the “Official Gazette” in October 1997. It entered into force on 6 November 1997 and came into effect on 5 June 1998. With the enactment of this new law, the former “Law of Forced Settlement, Bankruptcy and Liquidation”, as state regulation, used after the breakup from Yugoslavia, was replaced and not used anymore.

A trade creditor who supplies goods to a company that files for bankruptcy should seek to enforce certain rights in the Chapter 11 case. For instance, the Bankruptcy Code Section 546(c) preserves a creditor’s right of reclamation under state law. The applicable state law statute concerning reclamation is Uniform Commercial Code Section 2-702. The two statutes together permit a supplier of goods to reclaim goods provided to an insolvent debtor in the ordinary course of the debtor’s business when such goods are identifiable.

Over the last few years there have been a number of very substantial and high profile distressed situations in the Middle East and North Africa. A combination of the financial crisis, the “Arab Spring” and more recently fluctuations in petrodollar have hit some of the regions’ companies extremely hard.

As the attention of restructuring experts moves east, the LDK Solar group (“LDK”) has set a precedent as one of the first China-based groups to successfully restructure debt issued in the international capital markets through a court-based process. LDK and its advisers used tools developed at the cutting edge of European and US restructuring to overcome a number of issues inherent in restructuring a financially and geographically diverse corporate group.

Completely new solutions on bond restructuring will come into force in Poland on 1 July 2015. The change is crucial – so far, in principle, bond restructuring has been impossible, with the issuers having to resort to partial solutions or being unable to conduct any restructuring at all. The amendment arises from the new Act on Bonds of 15 January 2015 (the “Amendment”). The new rules introduce a number of solutions designed to allow “real” restructuring of bonds – by amending the terms of issue.

Welcome to issue 14 of Restructuring Global Insight, bringing you reports on breaking legal developments in restructuring law across borders and in jurisdictions around the world. This issue features: AMERICAS ■ Oil and gas bankruptcies will be complex ■ Helping over-burdened borrowers is the goal of bankruptcy CONTINENTAL EUROPE ■ Berlin, Germany’s leading tech city, to push venture capital reforms ■ ECJ clarifies defenses available against insolvency challenges in Germany UK ■ England’s changing approach to ipso facto clauses ■ UK oil price volatility – industry impact and legal considera

Important amendments and clarifications have been made to the Insolvency Act 1986 (the "Insolvency Act") pursuant to the Small Business, Enterprise and Employment Act 2015 ("SBEEA") and the Deregulation Act 2015, both of which recently received royal assent. These changes are intended to create a more robust regulatory framework for the administration of insolvencies and increase flexibility for insolvency practitioners.

How does the objective of achieving payment for creditors in insolvency interact with the objectives of pension legislation, which seeks to ensure that individuals are adequately provided for in retirement? The courts in New Zealand and in the UK have each recently grappled with this issue. In both of the recent cases considered in this article the pensions objectives won out and the specific pension funds in question were not made available for the bankrupt individual's creditors.