Under Austrian law the prevailing view and by and large unquestioned sentiment for decades had been that insolvency avoidance claims must be asserted by the administrator and cannot be assigned to a third party. Only in recent times a few scholars started to question this position. Now, in a very recent landmark ruling of 17 June 2019 (17 Ob 6/19k), the Austrian Supreme Court overruled the prevailing view and declared the assignment of avoidance claims by the administrator permissible. This is a game changer and will bring more flexibility and new dynamics in Austrian insolvencies.

Summary

In a very recent avoidance law decision the Austrian Supreme Court held that shareholders of Austrian limited liability companies, even if they are only small minority shareholders, can under certain circumstances be under a specific duty to investigate the company’s financial situation because of their statutory information and book inspection rights. If they fail to do so, they may have to return received payments if challenged by the insolvency administrator (Supreme Court file no. 3 Ob 117/18d).

Legal framework