Volume 15, Issue 3

Many jurisdictions around the world are seeking to develop an effective mechanism for rescuing financially distressed but viable businesses. In the UK a number of different mechanisms exist which can be used to restructure distressed companies. The purpose of this paper is to assess the debt restructuring mechanisms currently available to companies in English law and to consider the proposed reform of the UK regime, announced by the Government in August 2018. It is argued that reform is needed, and that in general the proposals to introduce a restructuring moratorium and a restructuring plan which includes a cross class cramdown are to be welcomed. However, these reforms will need to be introduced with care in order to ensure that an appropriate balance is maintained between the interests of the company and the interests of the creditors and that, ultimately, the UK’s regime remains fit for purpose for the future.

The English scheme of arrangement process has, in many ways, proved a reliable friend to distressed companies and their majority finance creditors in the decade following the financial crisis. However, experience of using the scheme process to achieve a debt restructuring has highlighted a number of areas where it could be improved for the present, or to make it more adaptable in the future. This article was written at a time when the Insolvency Service had launched a review of the corporate insolvency framework in the UK (and published many of the responses which it has received to the consultation), and the European Commission had published a proposal for a new Directive setting minimum harmonisation standards for restructuring law. Both the consultation and the proposal have significant implications for the reform agenda, and the Government has published its response to the UK consultation just as this article is going to press. This paper focuses on the introduction of a preliminary moratorium as a gateway to restructuring efforts, the crucial question of how to value the enterprise if a cram down mechanism is introduced and the role of the insolvency practitioner in the scheme context.

For a long time, German restructuring and insolvency law had no pre-insolvency restructuring scheme binding on dissenting creditors. Only in opened insolvency proceedings a restructuring plan could be used for debt restructuring. Now the German legislators has taken means to improve German law in three ways: first, by updating the German Bond Act (also known as the German Debenture Act), especially through permitting the change of the bond conditions by a majority vote of the creditors if the conditions allow for such majority vote; second, by improving German insolvency law through the “Act for the Further Simplification of Company Restructuring (ESUG)” which enables the debtor to start early restructuring preparation proceedings (“protective umbrella proceedings”); and, third, by announcing the introduction of new pre-insolvency restructuring proceedings as a reaction to the EU Directive proposed by the European Commission on 22 November 2016.

In Spain, the legal framework to solve the financial distress of businesses was confined to formal insolvency proceedings until recently, a number of reforms, have created a menu of options to tackle the problem out of court. The deficient results offered by formal insolvency proceedings in practice make this change commendable. The choice of out of court solution will depend on the type of debtor as well as on the kind of measurers needed to bring the business back to solvent trading. The most complete, versatile and practically relevant of the new procedures is the Homologated Refinancing Agreement. Through this vehicle, troubled-but-solvent or insolvent debtors (and groups of debtors) may restructure its business, refinance its debt or bail in its shareholders, with a minimal Court intervention. Although the design of the procedure is subject to improvement in a number of ways, it has already been used successfully to restructure a several highly relevant market participants, many with an important international component. It remains to be seen whether large corporations seeking to solve their financial distress will continue to consider buying an –economy class- ticket to England with a view to reach a scheme of arrangement with its creditors.

Singapore’s scheme of arrangement was very similar to that found in most Commonwealth countries. Over the last two decades the scheme has become a popular de facto debtor in possession regime in Singapore used to restructure the debts, both financial and trading, of insolvent companies. The courts have taken a leading role in this development. This success story has an unexpected twist recently. As part of its strategy to develop Singapore into an international centre for debt restructuring, the Government accepted the recommendations of a law review committee to bring in significant elements of the US Chapter 11: an automatic, wide-ranging moratorium, cross-class cram down, super priority lien and pre-packaged schemes. It will be argued that due to the significant differences between the insolvency laws of Singapore and US and the different conceptual framework of the scheme and Chapter 11, there will be a period of uncertainty or even instability while the courts work out ways to harmonise the two different bodies of law. This bold experiment has relevance beyond Singapore. It has close parallels in UK’s imminent reforms and, to a lesser extent, the European draft directive on restructuring.

The goal of this article is to analyse the scheme of arrangement as a debt restructuring tool in India and the extent to which it has been utilised. It finds that the scheme has been used sparingly for debt restructuring in India, and primarily in large and complex transactions. This is contrary to jurisdictions such as the United Kingdom and Singapore that have witnessed a rise in the use of this mechanism. This trend clearly indicates that the presence of an efficient restructuring mechanism in the legal rules is by itself inadequate to ensure its full utilisation. Apart from law on the statute books, necessary regard must be had to other legal and institutional considerations as well as a complex web of other factors, including historical and business considerations, which ultimately determine the success (or failure) of a mechanism such as the scheme of arrangement in each jurisdiction. In India, the scheme has been overshadowed by other mechanisms (both informal and formal), and that wide-ranging reforms to the law relating to corporate resolution have paid short shrift to the scheme. The article concludes with some recommendations to rejuvenate the use of schemes in India to exploit its full potential as an effective tool for debt restructuring.

This paper focuses on the impact that the ‘new approach to business failure’ has had on Italian out-of-court procedures. It will demonstrate that in 2005 Italian law started to embrace the rescue culture of out-of-court procedures by means of a series of reforms; initially, this movement facilitated the incorporation of the ‘new approach to business failure’, but – and this is the paradox – the more law makers and courts remove the old paradigms and introduce new ones, which in principle could make the procedures smoother, cheaper and more efficient, the more the law in the book and the law in action appear to be overloaded with additional prerequisites which make the procedures cumbersome, costly and inefficient.