Corporate Group Issues

Since the last decade of the last century, the need to treat an enterprise group in insolvency proceedings as one unit is looking for an adequate legislative answer. An efficient administration of insolvency proceedings related to companies belonging to the same group would minimise costs and loss of time, should minimise losses for creditors, employers and shareholders of the companies, assembled in the group and would maximise the groups’ value. However, national insolvency laws applicable in the EU as well as international proposals are based on the central principle of insolvency law, generally being the principle of the five one’s: one insolvent debtor, one estate, one insolvency proceeding, one court, and one insolvency office holder. It is rather complex to apply this strict legal foundation to the economic phenomenon of a group of companies. Remarkably, however, as of 26 June 2017 the EIR (2015) applies a novelty in that groups of companies are addressed in some twenty legislative provisions, in an aim to ‘… ensure the efficient administration of insolvency proceedings relating to different companies forming part of a group of companies’.