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 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.

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).

A credit institution appealed the ruling that approved the agreement claiming that the creditors meeting had allowed the presence and vote by a city council that, in its opinion, did not have such right because it was the holder of 100% of the share capital of the insolvent party.

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.

Judgment of the Court of Appeal of Porto of October 8, 2015 

Culpable insolvency – Duration of disqualification of the insolvent party

The Supreme Court confirmed the lower-court judgments that had rescinded the payments made to the managing director through remuneration, as the bylaw requisite to create the right to receive it had not been met, as well as payments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.

If an agency agreement is resolved due to the agent being declared insolvent, the business owner must compensate the agent for clientele if the requirements under the Agency Act are met (the agent brought new clients or clearly increased transactions with existing clients, and the previous activity is still beneficial for the business owner). 

In its writ dated February 2, 2016, the First Instance Civil Court No. 38 of Barcelona raised a preliminary issue to the Court of Justice of the European Union. In that writ, it requested the EU court to determine whether the business practice of assigning or buying credits without offering consumers the possibility to settle the debt by paying the assignee the outstanding amount is in line with EU law.

In its judgment 500/2016 of July 19, 2016, the Supreme Court interprets article 62.4 of the Insolvency Act, regulating the effects of contract resolution during insolvency: