In its judgment dated 2 September 2014, the Court of Appeal in The Hague ruled that moveable assets obtained subject to a retention of title (eigendomsvoorbehoud) should be considered future assets, and that ownership of such assets will be acquired after satisfaction of the relevant condition precedent (typically, full payment of the purchase price). A right of pledge over future assets created in advance will not be valid if the pledgor goes bankrupt before acquiring ownership of such assets.
In a judgment dated 20 March 2015, the Dutch Supreme Court ruled that all banks and intermediaries involved in the execution of a bank transfer, including the bank responsible for recording receipt of the bank transfer into the account held with it by the payee, qualify as parties whose services are directly or indirectly used by the payor in connection with the bank transfer.
Een failliet bedrijf kan aanlopen tegen handhavingsacties van bestuursorganen. Hierbij kan bijvoorbeeld worden gedacht aan verontreiniging van gronden onder een industrieel bedrijf, waartegen het bestuursorgaan optreedt door oplegging van lasten met sanering van de gronden als doel. Het bestuursorgaan komt dan de curator als beheerder van de boedel tegen. Kunnen bestuursorganen die bevoegd zijn om tegen bepaalde overtredingen op te treden nu de curator aanspreken tot naleving van de wettelijke verplichtingen ten aanzien van de milieuverontreiniging die voorheen op de onderneming rustten?
The Spanish Insolvency Act has been reformed several times recently to solve technical problems and to facilitate the continuity of economically or operationally viable companies. In the final quarter of 2014 alone, two partial reforms of the act were approved.
Royal Decree-Law 11/2014, of September 5, on urgent measures in insolvency matters
On March 7, 2014, the State Council released its Opinion on Further Optimizing the Market Environment for Corporate Merger and Restructuring (Guo Fa [2014] No. 14, “Circular 14”), to improve the institutional mechanisms and policies that encourage corporate mergers and restructuring. Circular 14 gives overall guidance on special treatments for merger and corporate restructuring transactions with regard to enterprise income tax (“EIT”), land value-added tax, value-added tax and business tax.
The Supreme Court confirmed the lower-court judgments that had rescinded the payments made to the managing director through remuneration, as the bylaw requisite to create the right to receive it had not been met, as well as payments made to shareholders through dividends, differentiating between the resolution of the meeting to distribute dividends and the payment of these dividends.
At the end of October 2014, as insolvency administrators of Establiments Miró, we carried out the sale of the insolvent company’s production unit to the Swiss fund Springwater Capital LLC.
This transaction was successful, resulting in maintaining 476 jobs, preserving 67 stores, and bringing income of €4,505,937 for the insolvency (€3,000,000 for the price and €1,505,937 for recovering the amount of the bonds to be substituted by the purchaser).
The Supreme Court repeated its criterion on classifying as insolvency claims any leasing installments arising after the declaration of insolvency, and interpreted the amendment introduced into article 61.2 of the Insolvency Act (“IA”) by the 2011 reform.
Decision of the Supreme Court of Justice, No 117-B/1999.P1.S1., of 2015-01-08 Transforming companies – Partner – Resignation – Liquidation of the company – Judicial ruling – Feasibility – Decision
In this decision, the Supreme Court of Justice (“STJ”) was asked to give ruling on the feasibility of the decision that was presented as an enforceable title, which was delivered within a special procedure of liquidation of an equity interest presented by a creditor partner against a debtor company.
The Madrid Senior Commercial Judges have published the conclusions of the meetings held on November 7 and 21 on the unification of applicable criteria of the reforms of the Insolvency Act enacted by Royal Decree-Law 11/201415 and Act 17/2014.16