Corporate recovery: maintaining your company in bankruptcy situations

It could well be that this corona crisis confronts your company with financial problems, which makes restructuring necessary in order to be able to continue the company.

This restructuring could involve declaring the company bankrupt and relaunching it. If the tide can’t be turned, you may even have to file for bankruptcy in order to avoid personal liability.

If you want to continue your business in these situations, you can think of various options to do so. The following two options are the most obvious: (i) a restart from bankruptcy or (ii) a restart from a situation in which the company is split up into viable and non-viable parts. In the first case, you can have the company declared bankrupt at your own request and then make an offer for the company to the trustee. You can then continue the company without debts, provided, of course, that the bid with the trustee succeeds. In the second case, you transfer the viable parts of the poorly performing company to another company and allow the poorly performing company to go bankrupt. The new company can then continue as a healthy company. The old company stays behind with the debts.

Which option is preferred depends on a number of circumstances. Also, the options are not without risk and it is important to be careful.

We can help you make the right choice and its implementation. Vestius Advocaten will map out the relevant legal and financial aspects with you. For example, we pay attention to the personnel aspects, the position of the creditors, the relationship with the shareholders and possible funders and possible liabilities of the company. We also have an extensive network of other specialists in the field of corporate recovery. These include tax specialists, accountants, register valuators and business consultants. Together with them, we can advise you in all relevant areas.

If you are interested to learn what we can do for you, please feel free to contact Henk Brat (+31 6 55394459) or Paul Hendriks (+31 6 30157994).

Published on 22 July 2020