Claudio Ceradini on Il Sole 24 Ore on the new debt restructuring agreements

New structure of debt restructuring agreements is arriving. What we have at the moment is only a reform framework of the bankruptcy code, but a natural link with the virtuous outcome of the new alert procedures seems already clear.

Article. 5, paragraph 1, lett. a) provides the introduction into restructuring agreements of the mechanism according to which the adhesion of 75% of the creditors may also be binding for the remaining 25%, will include all creditors, not only financial ones (art. 182 septies of actual Bankruptcy Law). Exemption from the payment within 120 days of dissenting creditors would be extended, not to allow anybody to take advantage to the detriment of those who have much more to loose.
Changes are expected on asset protection measures as well, to make them more effective and similar to art. 168 Bankruptcy Law rules.

Topics as follows:

1. actual rules provide sixty days standstill in the restructuring agreement procedure, which is not enough. Since creditors can file their opposition application in thirty days, should Court opposition manegement process take more than thirty left days, the debtor would be exposed in the final stage of agreement formalization to individual actions and their consequences, getting the whole plan in potential huge trouble,
2. rules provided in art. 168 which protects debtor assets from personal and individual mortgage registration performed in the previous ninety are expected to be exytended to restructuring agreement as well.

The picture we can take from the framework of the riform, is tha restructuring agreements will operate especially to rule creditors and debtor obligations as a natural outcome of timely activated alert procedures, which are about to be introduced as well.