Reorganization of Corporate Groups in Brazil: Substantive Consolidation and the Limited Liability Tale
by | posted in: Bankruptcy Roundtable Updates, International and Comparative, Legislation | 0

By Sheila C. Neder Cerezetti (Professor of Law, University of São Paulo Law School)

Sheila C. Neder Cerezetti

As argued by prominent Brazilian scholars, some of the most relevant attributes of the corporate form – limited liability and asset partitioning – might be considered just a tale in Brazil, as they have been consistently and subsequently weakened by a variety of reasons.

In light of this and of the large number of corporate reorganization cases involving groups of companies, which gave way to a series of unsubstantiated applications of substantive consolidation, the article raises the debate on the correct use of the mechanism in the country.

I question whether the lenient approach to substantive consolidation by Brazilian courts (i) is a natural consequence of the weakening of limited liability and asset partitioning, and (ii) represents a better way to recognize the Brazilian corporate reality, bringing more truth to reorganizations.

In the attempt to answer these questions, the article introduces the basic aspects of corporate reorganization in Brazil, offering a comprehensive overview of the Brazilian Bankruptcy Act (Law No. 11,101/2005). The description addresses the broad use of procedural and substantive consolidation even if, at the time, the Brazilian Bankruptcy Act lacked provisions for proceedings with multiple debtors. It shows that the permissive approach first directed to procedural consolidation slowly unraveled into a silent acceptance of substantive consolidation.

Next, the article explores some of the uses of substantive consolidation in the USA (where the mechanism started and gained traction) and in the UNCITRAL Legislative Guide on Insolvency Law (an important indicator of what might be adopted in other jurisdiction in the future), with a brief reference to the status of the matter in the European Union. In these cases, a set of prerequisites have been established to determine when the exceptional measure of the mechanism is appropriate.

In contrast, I call a misuse the often-unsubstantiated acceptance of substantive consolidation in Brazil, that fails to note its exceptionally. In the vast majority of cases, substantive consolidation actually happened in proceedings where none of the parties and not even the court expressly addressed the issue and implicitly just treated a single plan as something normal, although it mixed assets and liabilities of different debtors. And in those cases where the matter has been expressly addressed, the criteria for ordering the consolidation (i) varied greatly, to the point that it could not be rationalized in the form of a test, and (ii) failed to treat the remedy as an exceptional tool.

In light of the mentioned “tale of limited liability in Brazil”, one could wonder if such a misuse of substantive consolidation is in fact inappropriate. However, I argue that this tale is not so severe as to justify the lenient approach described, in view of the rules on corporate groups as well as of the fact that strictly commercial and civil relationships are, for the most part, protected from the exceptions to limited liability.

The article contends that there still is a compelling case for a stricter use of substantive consolidation, considering, among other reasons, that accepting the lenient criteria for ordering substantive consolidation would mean further weakening the attributes of the corporate form. It concludes by pointing to other tools in bankruptcy law that can better deal with the exceptions to the limitation of liability, and argues that substantive consolidation should remain a remedy for abuses of the corporate form that turn it dysfunctional.

Finally, it should be noted that a recently approved bill included provisions on procedural and substantive consolidation in the Brazilian Bankruptcy Law, ratifying the lenient approach described in the article. The article also serves as an explanatory description of the pathways that led the Brazilian legal system to such a discipline and as a warning about the perils of following this route.

The full article is available here.

Bankruptcy Jurisdiction Over Foreign Entities: Exorbitant or Congruent?
by | posted in: Bankruptcy Administration and Jurisdiction | 0

By Adrian Walters (Chicago-Kent College of Law, Illinois Institute of Technology)

As Oscar Couwenberg and Stephen Lubben have demonstrated, foreign firms commonly file for bankruptcy in the United States in order to take advantage of chapter 11 of the Bankruptcy Code. But overseas critics tend to balk at the ease with which global bankruptcy jurisdiction can be engineered in the United States through a combination of the Bankruptcy Code’s low bar to entry and the worldwide effects of a bankruptcy case. They complain that the formal structure of U.S. eligibility and jurisdictional rules promote abusive bankruptcy forum shopping and the harmful imposition of U.S. norms on non-U.S. stakeholders.

This article advances a revised account of U.S. bankruptcy jurisdiction over non-U.S. debtors from a distinctively Anglo-American standpoint. The article’s thesis is that critics overemphasize formal jurisdictional rules and pay insufficient attention to how U.S. courts actually exercise jurisdiction in practice. It compares the formal law “on the books” in the U.S. and U.K. for determining whether or not a domestic insolvency or restructuring proceeding relating to a foreign debtor can be maintained in each jurisdiction and provides a functional account of how U.S. bankruptcy jurisdiction over foreign entities is exercised in practice, using the concept of jurisdictional congruence as a benchmark. While the American and British approaches to abusive forum shopping are developing on different legal cultural paths, the article also identifies reasons for thinking that they are trending towards a rough functional equivalence influenced, at least in part, by the U.S.’s commitment to the UNCITRAL Model Law through chapter 15 of the Bankruptcy Code.

In sum, the article lays foundations for further critical reflection on the roles that judges, practitioners, and the “center of main interests” standard play in configuring the market for international bankruptcy case filings and in facilitating and regulating forum shopping in that market. Through the lens of legal development, it also presents some practical and policy challenges for universalism, international insolvency law’s dominant theory.

The full article is available here.

Emerging Economies and Cross-Border Insolvency Regimes: Missing BRICs in the International Insolvency Architecture
by | posted in: International and Comparative | 0

By Steven T. Kargman, President, Kargman Associates

SK-Roslyn (July '14) (1) Many of the world’s major advanced economies are subject to some form of cross-border insolvency regime, such as Chapter 15 in the United States. However, despite this clear and important progress in the adoption of cross-border insolvency regimes among many advanced economies, there appears to be a glaring gap in the international insolvency architecture. Specifically, very few of the major emerging economies – and, in particular, none of the BRIC countries (Brazil, Russia, India and China) – have adopted the UNCITRAL Model Law on Cross-Border Insolvency or otherwise enacted effective alternative regimes for handling cross-border insolvencies.

With their growing integration into the global economy, these emerging economies may face a rising number of cross-border insolvencies at some point in the coming years. Nonetheless, while the current absence of cross-border insolvency regimes in major emerging economies may not represent an immediate problem in the next few years, it may pose challenges for the international insolvency framework over the longer term given that these economies are playing an increasingly important role in the global economy.

This two-part article, originally published in 2012-2013 in Insolvency and Restructuring International, reviewed the status of the adoption among major emerging economies of comprehensive insolvency regimes along the lines of the UNCITRAL Model Law and outlined possible pathways that emerging economies might pursue that could lead to the adoption of such cross-border insolvency regimes in these jurisdictions. The article also explored intermediate steps that emerging economies might adopt as a means of growing more comfortable with the concepts that are central to any meaningful cross-border insolvency regime.  Such intermediate steps might serve to pave the way ultimately for the adoption by these emerging market jurisdictions of a more comprehensive cross-border insolvency regime.

Part I of the article (September 2012) can be found here and Part II (April 2013) can be found here.  (This article was first published in Insolvency and Restructuring International, Vol. 6 No. 2, September 2012 and Vol. 7 No. 1, April 2013, and is reproduced with the kind permission of the International Bar Association, London, UK © International Bar Association.)