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Dear Members

Tempus fugit!

They say time flies when you are busy and this has certainly been the case since our Annual Congress in Amsterdam and our last newsletter!

Several INSOL Europe members have been busy delivering panels for conferences around Europe.

In Lisbon, at the American Banking Institute's 2023 International Insolvency & Restructuring Symposium in Portugal, a successful panel on the complex subject of the intersection of sanctions and insolvency was delivered by my predecessor Frank Tschentscher together with Andri Antoniou, Damien Murran and Job van Hooff. Further details and a full report can be read below.

On 18 November I appeared online as keynote speaker at the UNPIR Regional Conference organized in Romania by INSOL Europe member Alina Pola, to speak about INSOL Europe as well as 'Distress treatment in Italy'. And just last week, together with INSOL Europe Member Stephan Madaus, we discussed at the XXX Convegno Nazionale di Studi Conference in Alba (Italy) on Cross Class Cramdown, focusing on the EU, German, Dutch and Italian perspectives.

Next week I will be at a Colloquium organized by ARE (the leading French turnaround association in Paris with over 300 members) & CEDAG (Centre des Affaires et Gestion) in France on the topic of 'Cross-views on the EU’s various newly introduced restructuring plan regimes.’ I will be joined by INSOL Europe French members such as Hélène Bourbouloux, and will describe our cooperation agreement with ARE.

In the meanwhile, we’re increasing our network with cooperation agreements with local associations. An agreement was signed in November with APDIR, the Portuguese non-profit association designed to encourage the participation of professionals working in the area of insolvency and recovery, thanks to our local member Francisco Patricio, Country Co-ordinator for Portugal. We have just signed a similar agreement with the German association 'Distressed Ladies' Women in Restructuring thanks to our Country Co-ordinator for Germany, Incoronata Cruciano. A full list can be found on our website and similar agreements are in the pipeline so watch this space!

And, finally, we are pleased to announce the publication of our Judicial Wing's latest publication, ‘The Relevance of the UNCITRAL Model Law on Cross Border Insolvency in the EU Member States, Albania, England & Wales’, co-ordinated by Nicoleta Mirela Năstasie and Eberhard Nietzer. You can find details of the book below.

Please do read on to find other news from our INSOL Europe family including changes to our working groups, book reviews, and insolvency statistics from Cyprus.

A presto!

Giorgio Corno
President, INSOL Europe

Giorgio Corno
President of
INSOL Europe

This issue is kindly
sponsored by:

DLA Piper is a global law
firm with lawyers located
in more than 40 countries
throughout the world.
www.dlapiper.com

New Technical Committee for Annual Congress 2024 - Sorrento

Preparations are already underway for our next Annual Congress, to be held in Sorrento from 3-6 October 2024. We are pleased to announce that the 2024 Technical Committee will be chaired by Rita Gismondi (Gianni & Origoni, Italy; INSOL Europe Country Coordinator) and Bart de Moor (Strelia, Belgium; INSOL Europe Council member & Country Coordinator) and the other members will include:

Andri Antoniou (CRI Group, Cyprus; INSOL Europe Country Coordinator)
Giorgio Corno (Studio Corno Avvocati, Italy; INSOL Europe President)
Incoronata Cruciano (Schiebe und Collegen, Germany; INSOL Europe Council member & Country Coordinator)
Klaudia Fratczak-Kospin (WKB Wierciński, Kwieciński, Baehr, Poland; Co-Chair of the Young Members Group)
Jan Lilius (Hannes Snellman Attorneys, Finland; INSOL Europe Council member & Country Coordinator)
Justice Catarina Macchi (Civil Court of Milan, Italy; INSOL Europe Judicial Wing member)
Sabina Schellenberg (Froriep, Switzerland; INSOL Europe Council member & Country Coordinator)
Prof. Patrizia Riva (Studio Patrizia Riva, Italy; INSOL Europe Council member)
Prof. Rodrigo Rodriguez (Universität Luzern, Switzerland; INSOL Europe Academic Forum Chair)

Information about the Annual Congress will be published on our website soon!

With thanks to our Main Sponsor:

INSOL Europe hosts successful panel at ABI Symposium

INSOL Europe were invited to have a panel at the prestigious American Bankruptcy Institute’s European Symposium in Portugal on 3 November. The panel was considered to be one of the highlights of the day, with several members of the audience stating how much they enjoyed the presentation and the panel's ability to break down what is considered to be a very complex subject matter in such an interesting way.

Frank Tschentscher (past INSOL Europe President, Deloitte, Germany) led the panel, which focused on the topic of 'Offering Solutions - When sanctions and insolvency cross paths.' Also on the panel were Andri Antoniou (CRI Group Nicosia, Cyprus), Damien Murran (Teneo, Dublin, Ireland), and Job van Hooff (Stibbe, Amsterdam, The Netherlands).

There has already been a suggestion that the panel is repeated early in 2024, so look out for further announcements!

Download the slides from INSOL Europe's panel here.
Read a detailed report of the panel session by Carmen Perales (Debtwire) here.

New publication from INSOL Europe's Judicial Wing

We are pleased to announce the completion of the latest project by INSOL Europe’s Judicial Wing: “The Relevance of the UNCITRAL Model Law on Cross Border Insolvency in the EU Member States, Albania, England & Wales.”

The 25th anniversary of the UNCITRAL Model Law on Cross-Border Insolvency (MLCBI) in 2022 made members of the Judicial Wing explore its impact on insolvency proceedings crossing borders between EU Member States in which the European Insolvency Regulation (EIR) applies, and non-EU Member States as well as Denmark, where the EIR does not apply. Generally, such proceedings are not governed by the EIR but by the local autonomous “international insolvency laws” of the involved jurisdictions.

The project analysed those autonomous laws and the types of procedures made available by them, as well as the practices of the insolvency courts in the respective jurisdictions.

The analysis was focused on the recognition of foreign insolvency proceedings, the available relief in case of recognition, on judicial cooperation and assistance in cross-border insolvency cases, and on the enforcement of insolvency-related judgments.

The required information was provided by twelve members of the Judicial Wing who agreed to fill out a questionnaire with questions on the above topics. Six of them sit in countries which have adopted the MLCBI (Albania, England & Wales, Estonia, Greece, Poland, Romania), and the other six sit in countries which have not adopted the MLCBI (Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Denmark, Germany, Latvia, Spain).

The responses by the twelve judges showed that the provisions on the recognition of foreign insolvency proceedings of the autonomous “international insolvency laws” in their respective countries are not uniform but quite heterogeneous. The answers to questions on practical experience with cross-border cases made us conclude the following:

Although some of the responding judges had dealt with cross-border cases, it looks like, overall, there is not much opportunity for the insolvency courts and practitioners to deal with cross-border cases.

This means that they cannot gain much experience with the application of their local provisions governing cross-border cases, no matter whether or not they are based on the MLCBI.

To the extent that they have dealt with cross-border cases, some courts have made endeavours to develop mechanisms and identify solutions for judicial assistance and cooperation.

However, as of today, those processes are still in the stages of infancy in most civil law jurisdictions.

If you have any questions relating to this project, please feel free to contact the project coordinators, Nicoleta Mirela Năstasie and Eberhard Nietzer.

To read the complete Judicial Wing Report, download the report here.

National Insolvency Statistics Update: Cyprus

Overall, the total number of insolvencies in Cyprus have decreased in the first half of 2023 by 12% compared to the first half of 2022, writes Andri Antoniou, Director, Insolvency Practitioner, CRI Group, Cyprus. However, it remains to be seen if factors such as increasing interest rates by the European Central Bank and inflation will lead to higher levels of insolvency over the coming years.

Voluntary liquidations: In accordance with the statistics maintained by the Insolvency Service in Cyprus, there were 951 voluntary liquidations during the first six months of 2022, whereas in the second part of the year a further 821 cases were recorded. During the first half of 2023 there were 764 voluntary liquidations. Based on these statistics, the number of voluntary liquidations declined by approximately 20% in the first half of 2023 compared to the same period last year, and by 30 % compared to the same period of 2021. Compared to compulsory liquidations, the number of voluntary liquidations remain comparatively higher as referred to below.

Compulsory liquidations: The number of winding up orders have been declining over the past decade, from their peak of 189 in 2003 to 57 in 2022. It’s noteworthy however that in March of 2023 alone, 31 winding up orders were issued resulting in a 91% increase in compulsory winding up orders for the first half of 2023 compared to the same period of 2022 and raises a question as to whether this is a sign of things to come. Compulsory liquidations are avoided whenever possible as adjudication of cases by the Cyprus courts can take a number of years where petitions are contested.

Examinership: The concept of Examinership was introduced in Cyprus in 2015, however to date, there have not been any successful Examiner appointments, with the appointment of only a handful of interim examiners.

Bankruptcies: The number of bankruptcy orders has fallen significantly over the past decade from 561 in 2012 to just 43 in 2022. Albeit there has been an increase in the number of bankruptcy orders in the first half of 2023 compared to the first half of 2022 of just under 10%.
Insolvency proceedings in general.

Further statistics from Cyprus and other jurisdictions can be found on our website here.

Eurofenix Book Reviews

These three book reviews are featured in our Autumn 2023 Eurofenix Journal:

Executory Contracts in Insolvency Law: A Global Guide - reviewed by Lézelle Jacobs, Associate Professor, Faculty of Law, University of Technology Sydney, Australia

Pilkington on Creditor Schemes of Arrangement and Restructuring Plans - reviewed by Eugenio Vaccari, Senior Lecturer in Law, Royal Holloway, University of London

The Interpretation and Value of Corporate Rescue - reviewed by Rebecca Parry, Professor of Insolvency Law, Nottingham Law School

We regularly feature book reviews and previews in our quarterly journal, Eurofenix, that we think are relevant and interesting to our members and readers. If you'd like to suggest a book for a future edition, please contact our book editor Paul Omar.

➡️ Read the reviews and the whole edition here.

INSIDE Story: AGPS Bondco

In this month's INSIDE Story, we cover the AGPS Bondco case, which is testing the English courts’ flexibility and ability to provide imaginative solutions to cross-border insolvency issues.

On the one hand, it is widely acknowledged that one of the ostensible objectives of the EU Insolvency Regulation was to prevent ‘forum shopping’ in the insolvency market.

The ‘recast’ Regulation toned down this goal, by focusing primarily on mechanisms to prevent fraudulent or abusive forum shopping. On the other hand, it is equally widely acknowledged that the English restructuring framework built its success by offering a flexible and adaptable mechanism to foreign companies to restructure their debt in the UK through schemes of arrangement.

UK schemes have long been criticised for the absence of any provision to bind dissenting classes of creditors. The Corporate Insolvency and Governance Act 2020 (CIGA 2020), which made major changes to the UK’s corporate restructuring and insolvency laws, introduced a flexible ‘restructuring plan’ procedure (Part 26A plans), capable of cramming down not simply dissenting creditors, but also dissenting classes of creditors.

Eugenio Vaccari (Senior Lecturer, Department of Law and Criminology, Royal Holloway and Bedford Colleges, University of London, UK; Co-chair, Insolvency Law Academy, India) sets out the facts in this case and analyses the solution.

Read the full story and all our Inside Stories on our website here.

New Chairs for our Working Groups

Our Annual Congress in Amsterdam was a great opportunity for our Working Groups to organize meetings to discuss their plans for the forthcoming year.

In practice with our policy of refreshing the Working Group committee chairs every 3 years or so, many of the groups also announced changes to their line-up.ke to be involved in one of the groups' activities.

EECC: Stela Ivanova (Bulgaria) replaced Niculina Somlea (Romania) alongside George-Louis Harang (France). Stela and George-Louis are already working on plans for the 2024 EECC Conference.

ITDA Wing now has a new co-chair, Sébastien Martin (France) alongside Dávid Oršula (Slovakia), and Laurent Le Pajolec (Poland). We can announce that the ITDA wing now also has a sponsor: Raid Square, a French company working in the cyber-security and digital assets field.

TRIP Group: Robert Hänel (Germany) now leads a new team featuring Dr. Dennis Cardinaels (Brussels), Xavier Garcia Esteve (Spain) and Christophe Thevenot (France)

Young Members Group: Robert Peldan (Finland) and Clarissa Nitsch (Germany) stepped down and handed over to José Carles (Spain) and Klaudia Frątczak-Kospin (Poland).

Updates from all of these groups will be published on our website in the forthcoming months.

Please do contact any of the co-chairs if you would like to be involved in one of the groups' activities.

Fraud Conference 2024 - Last chance for early bird tickets!

Returning for a fourth year on 29 February 2024, the Fraud Conference brings together world class speakers including policy makers, insolvency experts, fraud specialists and academics, offering unique insights on developments in the world of fraud. Hosted by the Fraud Advisory Panel, INSOL Europe and R3 this year’s event will be live and in person.

This year the conference will be chaired by Arun Chauhan (Fraud disputes specialist & financial crime compliance lawyer, Tenet & Trustee Director Fraud Advisory Panel).

A wide range of sessions are being planned to include:

AI and Deepfake: In this session our expert speaker will explore the role of AI and how fraud can appear in our daily lives.
The Tools of the future: Our speaker will demonstrate the ways the AI are being put into use stopping fraud and the opportunities this emerging technology present.
Is this the near future of fraud? The failure to prevent fraud offences and the online safety bill are two new and evolving pieces of legislation designed to address fraud and cyber-crime. But how will they work? This panel of experts will share their thoughts and experiences around the legislation and the role failure to prevent fraud could play in the future.
Plus 4 x breakout sessions covering a range of hot topics.

Register here today and save 15% with the early-bird discount until 1 December.

Other Upcoming Events & Conferences - Save the dates!

5 December 2023: ARE & CEDAG Conference
On the topic of 'Cross-views on the EU’s various newly introduced restructuring plan regimes.’ INSOL Europe President, Giorgio Corno, will be speaking about INSOL Europe and its connections to France.

5 December 2023: Luxembourg Local Seminar
On the ‘New Luxembourg Law of 7 August 2023 Preservation of companies and modernization of bankruptcy law and implementing EU directive 2019/1023.’ This seminar is organised by Christel Dumont and hosted by EY.

19 December 2023: UPO Seminar, Italy
On the subject of 'Early Warning Europe'.
INSOL Europe President, Giorgio Corno, will be providing closing remarks at the end of the seminar organised by Patrizia Riva.

Visit our website for details and registration links.

We welcome feedback, news and story ideas for future newsletters.

Please send your suggestions to Paul Newson, CEO & Communications Manager,
email: paulnewson@insol-europe.org.

Thanks to our General Sponsors

Please contact Hannah Denney for sponsorship opportunities.

INSOL Europe, PO Box 7149, Clifton, Nottingham. NG11 6WD

www.insol-europe.org

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Disclaimer: This newsletter is sent to members of INSOL Europe. No responsibility legal or otherwise is accepted by INSOL Europe for any errors, omissions or otherwise. The opinions expressed in the articles that appear are not necessarily shared by any representative of INSOL Europe.