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Le 20 juin 2019, le Parlement Européen a adopté une nouvelle directive qui harmonise pour la première fois le droit de l’insolvabilité au niveau européen.

L’attente fut longue avant que le processus de transposition en droit belge n’aboutisse enfin par l’adoption d’un projet de loi en mai 2023, et par la publication de la loi le 7 juin 2023.

La loi, dont le maître mot sera l’efficacité, entrera en vigueur le 1er septembre 2023.

On June, 20 2019, the European Parliament adopted a new directive harmonising insolvency law at a European level for the first time.

It was a long wait before the process of transposition into Belgian law finally came to fruition with the adoption in May 2023, and the publication of the law on June, 7 2023.

The law, whose guiding principle is “efficiency”, will come into force on September, 1 2023.

How close is too close? The answer to this question can have dire implications for people and companies involved in the cannabis industry who wish to seek bankruptcy protection.

Although a non-insolvency case the recent case of PACCAR Inc & Ors v Competition Appeal Tribunal & Ors (“PACCAR”) has caused waves in the litigation market (including insolvency litigation market) following the Supreme Court finding that litigation funding agreements (LFAs) where funders recover a percentage of the amount awarded to a claimant are damaged based agreements (DBAs) – which- unless the LFA complied with the Damages Based Agreements Regulations 2013 (“DBA Regs”) means that they are unenforceable.

When a debtor receives a bankruptcy discharge, section 524(a) of the U.S. Bankruptcy Code prohibits a creditor from seeking to collect a prepetition debt against the discharged debtor or its property. Importantly, the discharge does not extinguish the debt—it merely limits recourse against the discharged debtor. Section 524(e), however, provides that the discharge does not affect the liability of non-debtors for the discharged debt.

A floating charge debenture holder has the advantage that they can enforce their security by appointing their choice of administrators. This is a powerful and useful tool for lenders but is subject to the caveat that the debenture has to be “qualifying”.

As far as they go, restructuring plans have worked well since they were first introduced 3 years ago. This is reflected in the most recent review of CIGA published by the Insolvency Service which reflects favourably on this new insolvency measure. However, there are still some barriers to its use.

The confluence of the COVID-19 pandemic, high inflation, and increased borrowing costs culminated in countries incurring record levels of debt.[1] Despite this global debt crisis, there is currently no comprehensive set of rules or body of law to govern the restructuring of sovereign debt.

The three year review of CIGA (the Corporate Insolvency and Governance Act) published by the Insolvency Service suggests that we might see changes to the corporate moratorium process – will these address concerns about the process and encourage more insolvency practitioners to recommend its use?

It’s now level pegging for HMRC on cram down – twice it has been crammed down, and twice it has not.

In the most recent restructuring plan proposed by Prezzo, the court sanctioned the company’s restructuring plan and crammed down HMRC as both preferential and unsecured creditor. Unlike Houst’s restructuring plan, where HMRC was also crammed down, HMRC fiercely contested the plan proposed by Prezzo.