Introduction
Supreme Court of the Netherlands 11 July 2014 (ABN AMRO vs Berzona)
Given the unfortunate reputation of French courts for awarding substantial damages to employees for unfair terminations, US corporations with operations in France are anxious to limit their financial and legal exposure in case of litigation initiated by their French workforce. How to achieve this efficiently is a far from rhetorical question as French employees frequently pull in the US parent company as a named defendant. The recent decision of the French Supreme Court [Cass. Soc.
One of the more effective risk-mitigation legal tools used by senior real estate lenders is the single purpose entity borrower. Among other things, having a single purpose, bankruptcy remote borrower makes avoiding the risks of bankruptcy easier. Even in bankruptcy, if the borrower is truly single purpose, and it keeps the universe of creditors small, the senior secured lender will have an easier time defeating any plan of reorganization proposed by the borrower because it will control all of the legitimate classes of creditors by virtue of th
The Belgian Company Code provides for the possibility to dissolve and liquidate a Belgian company in a single step (en un seul acte/in één akte) (for more information, please see the June 2012 edition of this newsletter).
The Act of 25 April 2014 amending the Company Code with regard to liquidation procedure (the "Act") was published in the Belgian State Gazette on 14 May 2014 and entered into force on 24 May 2014. The Act amends one of the main requirements to proceed with dissolution and liquidation in a single step.
In recent years, bankruptcy courts have come closer to reaching a consensus regarding their ability to recharacterize debt into equity. Yet, beneath this consensus lies a deepening divide that lenders should be aware of. Recharacterization challenges “the assertion of a debt against the bankruptcy estate on the ground that the ‘loaned’ capital was actually an equity investment.” In re Insilco Techs., Inc., 480 F.3d 212, 217 (3d Cir. 2007) (internal citations omitted).
On 1 August 2013, an act amending the Business Continuity Act ("BCA") of 31 January 2009 entered into force.
The new act tackles the most common types of abuse under the Business Continuity Act and aims to reduce the number of bankruptcies following reorganisation governed by the BCA. The basic principles of the Business Continuity Act remain unchanged, however.
Bankruptcy is intended to provide a fresh start and discharge outstanding debt. But some debt is not dischargeable in bankruptcy. A Virginia bankruptcy court held last week that a judgment against the debtor for intentional trade secret misappropriation is not dischargeable.
In a ground-breaking decision, the Dutch Supreme Court recently found that a foreign bankruptcy trustee may in principle exercise the powers conferred on him under the lex concursus (the law governing the bankruptcy) in the Netherlands as well. Such powers can include the management and disposal of assets located in the Netherlands at the time of the foreign bankruptcy order.