As a general rule, lodging an appeal against a judgment no longer suspends its enforceability. This should accelerate the recovery of outstanding debt in Belgium.
Recovering outstanding debt in Belgium can feel like a long-winded and sometimes frustrating job. A creditor who obtained a judgment against a defaulting debtor is often confronted with an appeal by that debtor, lodged with the only intention to put the enforcement of this judgment on a back burner. Most courts of appeal built up a large backlog as a result of the massive workload of among others these dilatory appeals.
In a written statement this morning from Lord Faulks QC, Minister of State for Civil Justice, the government has announced that, from April 2016, insolvency litigation will no longer be exempt from what have been abbreviated to “the LASPO reforms”.
Regular readers of my blogs over the years will know that I never pass up a chance to use a musical analogy for business problems. As an insolvency lawyer with a second calling treading the boards, my legal practice and my music frequently vie for my attention: never more so than during the Christmas season.
Ruim zes jaar na het faillissement van het Meavita-concern heeft de Ondernemingskamer zich op 2 november jl. in harde bewoordingen uitgelaten over het handelen van bestuur en toezichthouders. De uitspraak volgt op een door de vakbonden en curatoren gestarte enquêteprocedure, waarin het beleid en de gang van zaken binnen Meavita voorafgaand aan faillissement zijn onderzocht.
I am often asked “what do you do”? If I reply “a regulatory solicitor”, this inevitably elicits a blank expression from the enquirer (be that a non-lawyer or lawyer), so I go on to the more long-winded version, that I am a criminal solicitor who advises business owners and other stakeholders on how to stay on the right side of the criminal law, and defends them when they get it wrong.
Quoted October 2015 - Edition 105 Current issues relating to accounting law, article 403 liability and insolvency law 2 In this edition • Introducion • Financial reporting • Article 403 liability • Facilitating reorganisations of businesses: Dutch pre-packs and schemes 3 Fourth Directive (78/660/EEC) and the Seventh Directive (83/349/EEC) in relation to individual and consolidated accounts, and Directive 2013/50/EU, which amends a number of the provisions of the Prospectus Directive (2003/71/EC) and the Transparency Directive (2004/109/ EC). 1.
It was far from a secret that a veritable smorgasbord of phased changes to insolvency law were coming in on 1 October. The legal and insolvency press has been riddled with it, and frankly the flavours were all a bit predictable. The commentators falling over themselves to ask mundane questions such as “are you ready for…?” and “what will happen now…?” are really just asking “we are really up to date on the new law, aren’t we brilliant?”; of course you are, but you’re not getting any marks for originality.
The news in January of this year that the government planned to increase the bankruptcy petition threshold to £5,000 (subject to parliamentary scrutiny) from 1 October was greeted with mixed reaction. On the one hand, it was welcomed in that the threshold of £750 which had been in place since 1986 was wildly out of date.
Over the past 15 years or so, one of the most commonly recurring themes in my practice has been advising both insolvency practitioners and directors on the prospects of legal proceedings being pursued for breach of director duties and/or wrongful trading. Very often the two claims are put together for the purposes of an actual or threatened claim, and very often sitting behind the scenes as well is a possible investigation and/or claim that one or more directors should be disqualified.
Most people who deal in property regularly will be very aware of the risk of acquiring a property for less than its true value if it turns out that the seller falls into some sort of insolvent procedure after the sale. This “undervalue” concern will often be front of mind if it is known that the seller is in a distressed situation, e.g. their lender is threatening to take possession. In some cases the ‘look back period’ for an insolvency practitioner taking office over an insolvent seller’s affairs can be as long as 5 years.