Global Restructuring Review

In a Dutch insolvency case, an insolvency practitioner (IP), “curator” X, asked the District Court of The Hague to determine an advance on his fee. He also requested the amount of the bankruptcy costs. The invoice covered the period from 1 January 2023 up to and including 24 February 2025, when X was replaced by another IP. The court heard… Read More »2026-08-doc1 Does the debtor have a say in determining the fee for an IP?

Europe Column: The “Certain Aspects” harmonisation directive – a motley collection of topics – Global Restructuring Review

In April and May of this year I published two blogs on the Mercon Protocol, see ‘The US-approved Mercon protocol and the Dutch courts / Part One’ at https://bobwessels.nl/blog/2024-04-doc3-the-us-approved -mercon-protocol-and-the-dutch-courts-part-one/, followed by a second blog, see https://bobwessels.nl/blog/2024-05-doc3-the-us-approved-mercon-new -protocol-and-the-dutch-court-part-two/. The full case can be taken form these two blogs. At the moment of writing the last, Part II blog, I had… Read More »2024-07-doc4 US approved New Protocol in Mercon. Where is it? Part III

Two weeks ago I published ‘The US-approved Mercon protocol and the Dutch courts / Part One’, see https://bobwessels.nl/blog/2024-04-doc3-the-us-approved-mercon-protocol-and-the-dutch-courts-part-one/. It was the text of my column of some 4 or 5 weeks earlier in Global Restructuring Review (GRR), the world’s only daily news and analysis service on cross-border restructuring and insolvency law. See https://globalrestructuringreview.com/. As a refresher, Mercon Coffee Corporation and… Read More »2024-05-doc3 The US-approved Mercon ‘New Protocol and the Dutch Court / Part Two

Intro. A recent Dutch court case provides a Spanish bank (with a secured claim) an expensive lesson when dealing with the bankrupt Dutch owners of a Spanish holiday home. The bank collaborated in the sale and transfer of title of the holiday home in Spain owned by the two Dutch nationals, without permission from their IP appointed in the insolvency… Read More »2023-06-doc3 Spanish banks beware of insolvent Dutch nationals with holiday homes!

On 6 April 2023, Steinhoff International Holdings NV (SIHNV) announced that the Amsterdam District Court had appointed both Frédéric Verhoeven, a partner at Houthoff, and Willem Meijer, founder of Mediation Kamer Amsterdam, as observers (“observator”) in connection with its draft restructuring plan. Steinhoff’s plan is covered by the Dutch Wet homologatie onderhands akkoord or Act on the confirmation of a… Read More »2023-05-doc1 Observing the WHOA observer

I wil discuss how Russia sanctions have permeated a Dutch insolvency and I will make a case for a pan-European approach towards the impact of public law measures on insolvency law. ATB case. The case at hand concerns Amsterdam Trade Bank NV (ATB), which operates out of the Netherlands and has 23,000 private account holders. The bank has Russian connections… Read More »2023-02-doc1 Russia sanctions impacting insolvencies

The English Court of Appeal’s decision in East-West Logistics v Melars Group (East-West Logistics Llp v Melars Group Ltd [2022] EWCA Civ 1419 of 28 October 2022 draw my attention, especially by the concurring view of one of the judges, Lord Justice Lewison. Lord Justice Lewison is known to me from the famous Stanford International Bank case of 2009, which… Read More »2023-01-doc1 COMI and ascertainability by third parties

The EU (without Denmark) is an economic market, with 27 member states. All these states have their own national insolvency system. In this whole European region there are presently around 120 types of national insolvency proceeding, which is around 4.5 per member state. As examples: Belgium lists eight proceedings (in Dutch and in French), Estonia two, Ireland no less than… Read More »2022-11-doc4 Towards a review of the Dutch IP profession

In the first decade of this century, in European insolvency law the H-word was on the list of banned terminology. In 2011 the ice had been broken by the European Parliament (EP). It was assisted in its decision via a group of reports from mainly practitioners gathered in INSOL Europe, European’s largest insolvency practitioners’ group. The EP gave its go-ahead… Read More »2022-02-doc1 European Insolvency Law: the year ahead