Earlier this year, a group of bondholders advised by William Fry and owed over US$175m by GTLK Europe DAC (GTLK Europe) and GTLK Europe Capital DAC (GTLK Capital) (collectively the Companies) petitioned for the winding up of the Companies on a number of grounds, including that they had failed to discharge scheduled interest payments and the accelerated debt constituted by the bonds following the interest payment defaults.
On 7 December 2022, the European Commission published the Proposal for a Directive of the European Parliament and of the Council harmonising certain aspects of insolvency law. This Proposal is intended to harmonise the insolvency laws of EU member states in order to make insolvency proceedings more predictable and efficient. The Proposal also includes a number of principles the pre-pack proceedings in each member state must meet.
The Proposal defines pre-pack proceedings as:
Belgium is finally about to transpose Directive 2019/2023 on preventive restructuring frameworks and regulated pre-pack proceedings are now accessible.
European and Belgian legislative developments
Insolvency law has experienced significant activity in recent years, both at European level and at Belgian level, in favour of a paradigm shift of restructuring through pre-pack proceedings instead of liquidation.
Der BGH festigt und erweitert seine Rechtsprechung zum Kleinbeteiligtenprivileg im Kontext der insolvenzrechtlichen Anfechtung nach § 135 Abs. 1 Nr. 2 InsO.
On 7 December 2022, the EU Commission issued a proposal for a directive harmonising certain aspects of insolvency law (the Draft Directive). One key aspect of this Draft Directive is the regulation of pre-pack proceedings.
In the absence of any currently existing pre-pack procedure, this means that such a procedure will ultimately need to be introduced in Luxembourg law. Furthermore, pre-pack sales may have a more immediate future through Luxembourg Bill No. 6539 A, which entirely revamps Luxembourg insolvency law and should be passed in the near future.
Context
Understandably the focus of corporate transactions, restructures and insolvencies tends to be big ticket issues such as finance, tax and assets.
Immigration considerations are often overlooked, potentially resulting in hidden risks and headaches for those involved. In this article, we look at the implications of such scenarios in two key compliance areas: sponsor licences and the prevention of illegal working.
What is a sponsor licence?
The events in the last few years have had significant and lasting impacts on business in general and restructuring in particular, with the latter referring to the various options available for firms experiencing difficulties. European economies, hit by both the upheavals caused by the health crisis and geopolitical tensions, have also been a
A “pre-pack” is a sale of all or part of a distressed company’s business or assets, negotiated before the company enters a formal insolvency process and executed by the appointed insolvency practitioner immediately after the insolvency process begins.
In the first part of this article, we dealt briefly with the European Commission’s proposals to further strengthen and ensure the proper application of the existing common framework for managing bank failures, through the publication of a proposed package amending the framework on banks’ crisis management and deposit insurance (“CMDI”) on 18 April 2023.