A Dutch Court of Appeal recently upheld a lower court’s decision that a liquidator has the right to access data concerning the administration of a bankrupt company, the data of which are kept by a third party. It also held that this right, however, does not imply that the third party must provide the data in an orderly manner without being adequately compensated for it.
In geval van faillissement zijn er vaak meerdere schuldeisers tussen wie de overgebleven gelden moeten worden verdeeld. Daarbij is het van belang of een vordering als boedelschuld of als concurrente vordering wordt aangemerkt. Schuldeisers met een boedelvordering hebben voorrang op concurrente schuldeisers en krijgen vaak een groter deel van hun vordering vergoed. Het is voor een schuldeiser dus van belang dat een vordering als boedelvordering wordt aangemerkt.
In het faillissement geldt een verlicht ontslagregime. Daarmee zijn faillissementsprocedures aantrekkelijk voor ondernemers om hun personeelsbestand te saneren. De vraag is echter of de faillissementsaangifte hiervoor mag worden gebruikt. In dit artikel zal worden ingegaan op het inzetten van het faillissementsrecht om de arbeidsrechtelijke bescherming van werknemers te omzeilen. Wanneer is sprake van misbruik van de eigen faillissementsaangifte?
Recente zaak: faillissement van een schoenenhandel
Recent developments
In recent years Dutch banks have established a practice of creating undisclosed rights of pledge (stil pandrecht) on all current and future receivables of their borrowers in an easy way and without the borrower's involvement. In the Supreme Court's ruling of 3 February 2012 (HR 3 February 2012, LJN BT6947), this practice was unsuccessfully put to the test by a bankruptcy trustee, who contested the alleged right of pledge of ING Bank on receivables of its bankrupt client.
(Europa West-Indië Lijnen B.V./Container Leasing International LLC)
A recent judgment of the Amsterdam Court of Appeal marks the latest trend in Dutch law to strengthen the position of the debtor in the context of pre-judgment attachments. The Court of Appeal gave effect to the full disclosure principle that stipulates that the creditor, in its request for leave to make pre-judgment attachments, should properly inform the court of the merits of its claim and the dispute with the debtor.
Taking decisions to liquidate companies has become a matter of routine when optimising corporate structures to improve cost efficiency. Increasingly, we see that such decisions have been taken either prematurely or without taking all of the relevant factors into account.
In a recent case before the Court of Appeal in ‘s-Hertogenbosch, the question was raised whether a liquidator should get access to data stored in a cloud, when the company, having a contractual relationship with the cloud provider, has gone into bankruptcy.