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De Herstructureringsrichtlijn van 20 juni 2019 zorgt voor het eerst op Europees niveau voor een harmonisatie van de wetgeving omtrent insolventie.

Een belangrijk onderdeel van deze Richtlijn heeft betrekking op preventieve herstructureringsstelsels, die tot doel hebben de vereffening van levensvatbare ondernemingen te vermijden.

In België zal dit voornamelijk een impact hebben op de gerechtelijke reorganisatie, en meer bepaald op de gerechtelijke reorganisatie door een collectief akkoord.

The Restructuring Directive of 20 June 2019 harmonises insolvency legislation for the first time at the European level.

An important part of this Directive concerns preventive restructuring frameworks, which aim to limit the unnecessary liquidation of viable companies.

In Belgium, this will mainly impact judicial reorganisation, and more specifically judicial reorganisation by means of collective agreement.

La directive du 20 juin 2019 relative aux restructurations harmonise pour la première fois la législation sur l'insolvabilité au niveau européen.

Une partie importante de cette directive concerne les cadres de restructuration préventive, qui visent à limiter la liquidation inutile d'entreprises viables.

En Belgique, cela aura principalement un impact sur la réorganisation judiciaire, et plus particulièrement sur la réorganisation judiciaire par accord collectif.

A recent law, which came into force on 21 July 2022, amends the regulation for the accounting professions with regard to their professional practice and the anti-money laundering prevention.

The law was enacted after the Constitutional Court ruled in two judgments that various provisions of the law relating to the audit profession and the anti-money laundering law were against the constitution.

Hereafter we discuss the impact of the new law on auditors, certified public accountants and the unregulated tax advisors.

The Supreme Court confirmed parties' freedom to contractually modify any of the prerequisites for set-off under Bulgarian law, thus permitting various quasi-security arrangements in commercial and financial contracts that creditors may avail themselves of.

Prerequisites for statutory set-off in Bulgaria

The Hungarian government issued a decree that amends certain provisions of the bank's liquidation proceedings. The decree entered into force on 15 April 2022 and affects the solvent liquidation of Sberbank Hungary, a subsidiary of Sberbank Europe AG, the Hungarian member of the Russian Sberbank group.

So far, the Bulgarian economy has encountered various COVID-19-related effects, but a surge in insolvencies is not yet one of them. Although the Bulgarian state was slow in implementing measures to help companies affected by the pandemic – which measures turned out to be insufficient – there has been no visible increase in bankruptcy proceedings since 2020.

There has been a longstanding need in Hungary for a legal instrument to rescue distressed companies. The only legal solution so far for such companies was the unpopular and inflexible bankruptcy procedure, which is also risky for the debtor, as failure will automatically turn into a liquidation proceeding and the company will cease to exist. Bankruptcy, with its formalistic procedures and limited involvement of creditors in the decision-making, has done more harm than good. It also usually stigmatised the debtor.

As of 17 July 2021 the EU restructuring directive1 was implemented in Austria by the new Austrian Restructuring Code (ReC). The ReC allows debtors to enter formal restructuring proceedings before actually becoming insolvent. To minimise the disruption to debtor's operations, the proceedings are not public, a ban on enforcement of collateral can be implemented and the rights of counterparts to amend or terminate existing contracts are significantly curtailed.

Verkopers en leveranciers van roerende goederen kunnen problemen met slecht betalende klanten voorkomen via een beding van eigendomsvoorbehoud.

Met dit beding kan men namelijk contractueel bepalen dat het eigendomsrecht op een bepaald goed pas overgaat nadat de derde-verkrijger er de prijs volledig van heeft betaald.