The Appeals process is governed by Rules 12.59; 12.61 and Schedule 11. The old corresponding provisions were Rules 7.47 and 7.49A.

The major change to the provisions is that there is now clarification on appealing decisions made by District Judges. The new rules provide that these appeals will now lie either to a High Court Judge in a District Registry or a Registrar in Bankruptcy at the High Court. This was previously the case, but was only inserted into the old rules by way of an Amendment - they now come fully under the scope of the rules.

The out of Court appointment processes are broadly similar to the processes under the Insolvency Rules 1986 with some minor amendments. The most significant change is the abolition of the prescribed forms for appointment documents.

Whatever type of appointment (out of Court by company/directors, out of Court by Qualifying Floating Charge Holder ("QFCH"), application to Court), the Consent to Act form and contents is dealt with by r3.2.

Appointment out of Court by directors/the Company

Applications

Rule 12 sets out rules relating to applications, (excluding administration applications, winding up petitions and creditors' bankruptcy petitions) including:

Schedule 5 of the new rules provides some clarifications on the calculation of time periods:

1. Days - CPR 2.8(1) applies meaning that a period of time expressed as a number of days means clear days, meaning you do not count the day on which the period begins, and the if the end of the period is defined by reference to an event, the day on which that event occurs.

Expedited petitions

The Court of Florence (November 2, 2016) confirmed that the debtor can retain part of his assets, with a view to support the company’s recovery and in derogation to principles of liability of the debtor.

The case

A company applied for concordato preventivo, based on a plan providing for, on one side, the sale of those assets not functional to the business and, on the other side, the company to continue to trade retaining those other assets which were needed for the activities to be carried on.

A ruling of the Court of Padua of 31 December 2016 is compared with few other known Court decisions regarding the extension of the effects of a debt restructuring agreement to dissenting financial creditors

The case

Two companies having an indebtedness mainly towards banks and leasing companies, jointly submitted to the Court a request for confirmation of a debt restructuring agreement providing for a two-year moratorium of payment of principal and a restructuring of interests.

The Court of Cassation (decision No. 4915 of 27 February 2017) lowered the threshold allowing the Bankruptcy Court to review the feasibility of the concordato preventivo proposal.

The case

The Court has recently announced it will be publishing some standard forms for insolvency procedures, to be published under the Insolvency Practice Direction.

The forms are expected to be available towards the end of March.

This is the current list of what will be published. There may be some amendments.

Forms being hosted by Court under Practice Direction (these were identified as forms to "keep" from Schedule 4)

Administration

The language of the rules has been amended and there is now more reference to delivery of documents rather than service. Rules 1.40 - 1.53 set out rules relating to delivery wherever documents are required to be delivered by the new rules.

These rules include the following headings: