Piya Mukherjee
President of
INSOL Europe

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The COVID Coffee Breaks are free for all to view, so please do share the coming invitations with your colleagues and friends. Take a break, have a coffee and enjoy the COVID Coffee Break!

The COVID Coffee Breaks are brought to you in partnership with LexisNexis with whom INSOL Europe is honoured to collaborate on the COVID-19 tracker of insolvency reforms globally.

The tracker of global insolvency reforms produced by Lexis Nexis in partnership with INSOL Europe continues to expand and is available on our website.

We look at various countries which are expediting reforms to their restructuring and insolvency laws, temporarily suspending onerous insolvency law provisions, increasing limits for statutory demands, suspending enforcement powers and introducing other measures to deal with the COVID-19 crisis. 

As the situation is rapidly evolving with more countries adding new measures daily, you should contact local lawyers in the relevant jurisdiction to check the current measures in force.

Our thoughts are with our colleagues around the world impacted by COVID-19.

The INSOL Europe Membership Development Committee (MDC) has been established to stimulate the local visibility of INSOL Europe in each country, to increase our membership and facilitate the networking between INSOL Europe members.

In order to reach that goal, Country Coordinators have been appointed in several jurisdictions. Some of the Country Coordinators have already devised a country plan to find new members and to increase local networking opportunities.

The plans consist of networking events, meetings, seminars with academic content, articles etc. The plans that are in progress for some of the countries differ considerably, depending on the structure of the insolvency profession in that specific jurisdiction. 

We need to find the way to facilitate networking and increase the membership of INSOL Europe, that is most effective for each jurisdiction. Due to COVID-19 the meetings and events that the Country Coordinators planned for 2020 have been postponed, but we are sure that those activities will be planned as soon as it is possible. Furthermore, the MDC is still searching for several Country Coordinators. New INSOL Europe Council members, that will be elected for the reserved and non- reserved seats, will be asked to fulfill the position of Country Coordinator for their specific jurisdiction. 

If you are a member of INSOL Europe in a country without a Country Coordinator (for a list of Country Coordinators take a look at the website) and you have ideas of how to increase INSOL Europe membership and also how to organize effective local networking opportunities, feel free to contact the members of the MDC in your country or one of the co-chairs: Alice van der Schee, Radu Lucian Lotrean and Alberto Núñez-Lagos.

Due to the global Covid-19 pandemic, Romania declared a state of emergency, as of 16 March 2020, by Presidential Decree No. 195/2020 (Decree) for 30 days, which, on 15 April 2020 was extended by another 30 days.

At the same time as the Decree was enacted, the emergency authorities imposed “lockdowns”, including measures like closing non-essential businesses, limiting public gatherings and limiting people’s movements as well as monitoring the streets to ensure people remain inside. These measures have serious implications for the right to liberty, freedom of association and freedom of movement. In addition, many employees lost their jobs or their individual labour agreements were suspended due to technical unemployment; hotels are empty, flights are grounded, restaurants and other small businesses are closing.

Alina Valeanu and Andrei Zamfirescu, Senior Associates at bnt attorneys in CEE, Romania. report on how insolvency procedures are affected due to the ongoing crisis.. Read the full story and other articles here.

If you would like the opportunity to have your Inside Story published in a future edition, please email Communications Manager, Paul Newson for details.

This is the time of year when we consider retirements from and elections to our Council. 

Countries with 30 or more members are entitled to a reserved seat on Council and 
in October this year, vacancies will arise for the following seats: Germany, Italy, 
UK and Portugal.

Therefore, members from these countries will have received an email requesting nominations for candidates from their country. 

In the meantime, one non-reserved seat vacancy on Council (which may be occupied by any country) will also become available. 

To find out about the role of Council Members, please read the attached document.

If you have not yet received email notification of the election process, please contact Membership Manager Hannah Denney.

Sam MacAuslan of Project Associates has sent us this useful guide for dealing with the media in these unprecedented times.

Engaging with a hostile media is an unappealing prospect for a restructuring professional at any time, let alone during a global crisis that has shone an unflattering spotlight on corporate behaviour. As Covid-19 has swept the world, it has been followed by a wave of anxiety as employees worry whether they will have jobs to come back to once workplaces reopen. This in turn has led to increased media scrutiny for all employers, and particularly those facing an uncertain future. 

Those leading major restructuring processes during this period will need to tame the media beast, or run the risk that negative headlines turn into false narratives and eventually derail the process. Once news of job losses or insolvency moves from the business section of newspaper or website to the front page, the reputational consequences for creditors, partners, even restructuring professionals themselves, persist once the process is complete. In the past this would be a concern only in the most high-profile sectors, such as 2019’s administration and bankruptcy proceedings in the UK and US retail sectors. In the wave of restructuring to come, any perception of business failure is likely to be front page news. 

Job losses, plant closures and cost savings are not the stuff of good news stories. The restructuring process itself creates uncertainty and generates questions. By definition, those questions cannot be fully answered until the process reaches a conclusion. Employees want to know if they will keep their jobs, customers want to know how services will be affected. This should not, however, become an excuse for keeping silent entirely. Silence risks creating mistrust and undermining authority, which in turn allows other stakeholders to control the narrative. Read the full article on our website here.

ERA is one of the most established training providers on European law, and they have been committed to offering training on European law for more than 25 years. The organisation is partially funded by the European Union, and their courses attract legal practitioners from all over Europe from various professional groups and sectors.

This webinar (afternoon sessions) will cover:

• Practical aspects of cross-border insolvency proceedings
• How to apply the EU Insolvency Regulation
• National insolvency laws and recent measures in the Coronavirus crisis
• The new Directive on restructuring and insolvency and its impact
• Set-off and netting
• Brexit and insolvency

Further information can be found in the seminar programme.

We are pleased to announce that we will be holding a joint conference with R3 and the Fraud Advisory Panel in London on 27 October 2020 at the Chartered Accountants’ Hall (Moorgate Place), London. For updates on this event, please visit our website.

Please note, this event will take place on-line if we are not able to meet in person.