Your committee leadership has been actively engaged in organizing various webinars and other educational programs. Together with ABI’s International Board Committee, we put together a webinar to introduce ABI members to restructuring issues in Africa (led by International Committee membership director Charles Pirhi), and we will be continuing the series by examining around directors’ fiduciary duties around the globe (next stop: Australia and the Far East, led by special projects director Evan Zucker).

ABI International European Insolvency Symposium: Being held in London Oct. 27-29, this year’s program will feature educational and networking opportunities focusing on European and international insolvency issues. Register today at www.abi.org/hybrid/conference/iis24/page.

The problem of the Polish debtor entering the M&A procedure in a situation of threatened debt collection appears in the context of cross-border debt-collection cases. Only recently has our firm encountered such a case, the description of which can be treated as an interesting universal case study of the application of a legal procedure, which is the division of a limited liability company by separating part of the assets, with the subsequent transfer to a newly established company.

The situational context — at what exact moment the capital company reaches for the application of such a procedure, namely the fact of the perspective of threatened debt collection — provides a basis for the analysis of the effects of the application of such a legal procedure, which in Polish law is regulated by the provisions of Article 533 and subsequently the Polish Commercial Companies Code. The effects are (1) reduction of liability for debts covered by the division, and (2) underestimation of the value of assets by speculative methods, which gives fuel to the assessment by foreign creditors of such M&A cases as a tool to avoid liability for debts.

German rules regarding the civil and criminal liability of managing directors in insolvency are quite draconian. Even if a managing director makes a good-faith effort to restructure the enterprise, this does not necessarily avoid liability when things go wrong and the corporation ends up in insolvency.