Before 1st October 2021, French law did not provide for the possibility to cram down shareholders, other than under Article L. 631-19-2 of the French Commercial Code, which sets conditions which are so stringent that it is not used in practice.

Directive 2019/2023 has let EU member states decide whether shareholders should be a class of “affected parties” subject to cross-class cram down or whether other measures should be implemented to avoid shareholders preventing, or making it difficult, in an unreasonable manner, the approval of a restructuring plan.

Over the Bank holiday weekend, the UK government announced that it intends to introduce new legislation to implement certain measures (detailed below) as soon as parliamentary time permits.

A new bill, which the UK Government introduced to Parliament on 12 May 2021, seeks to extend the existing directors’ disqualification regime to the directors of dissolved companies.

Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer LLP Comparison of Abu Dhabi Global Market (ADGM) and Dubai International Financial Centre (DIFC), October 2015 1 Established pursuant to Abu Dhabi Law No. 4 of 2013, the ADGM is currently in the process of establishing itself as an alternative financial centre to the DIFC. It is intended that over time the ADGM will become a recognised international financial centre alongside the DIFC and other regional financial centres in Qatar, Bahrain and Saudi Arabia.

On 18 March 2021, the UK Government published its long-awaited white paper on restoring trust in audit and corporate governance.

This follows a series of high-profile audit errors and major corporate collapses, including those of BHS in 2016 and Carillion in 2018, which led the Government to commission three independent reviews into different aspects of the UK’s audit, reporting and corporate governance systems.

The white paper targets large listed and AIM-listed companies, and large private companies where there is a public interest, and primarily focuses on:

Summary

A new law which came into force on 8 August 2015 now permits a French court to enforce debt-for-equity swaps. Where the debtor company is in judicial reorganisation proceedings (redressement judiciaire) and if certain conditions are met, the court can either:

Last month, the German Federal Ministry of Justice published draft legislation that could fundamentally change the restructuring landscape in Germany.

An essential part of the law is the introduction of a corporate stabilisation and restructuring regime, which establishes a comprehensive legal framework for non-consensual out-of-court restructurings in Germany on the basis of the EU's 2019 restructuring directive.

Welcome to our guide for directors and prospective directors of subsidiary companies in Japan.

Court closures

India was in complete lockdown from 24 March until 31 May, a situation that inevitably impacted the functioning of Indian courts. Even though most implemented measures to conduct virtual hearings, these hearings have been limited to only the most urgent cases. Once courts return to business as usual, they are likely to receive a surge in filings, which will increase the backlog in a country that already has 30 million pending cases.

Welcome to our guide for directors and prospective directors of subsidiary companies in Austria.