Astrea / News / Standard work published on the new Belgian legi...

07-02-2022

Standard work published on the new Belgian legislation surrounding pre-pack reorganizations and pre-insolvency

Publications | Louis Verstraeten

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet,
consetetur sadipscing elitr,
sed diam nonumy eirmod
tempor invidunt ut labore et
dolore

A standard work has been published on the new Belgian legislation surrounding "pre-pack" reorganizations and "pre-insolvency". The book is published in French and contains an important comparative law chapter analyzing the situation in other European countries. Astrea partner Louis Verstraeten, together with two Dutch correspondents Sergei Parijs and Henk Ligtenbarg, provided the section on the Dutch WHOA (Wet Homologatie Onderhands Akkoord). The WHOA was introduced in the Netherlands on January 1, 2021 and since then has been a widely used tool to reorganize and restructure companies without bankruptcy.

Belgium has a big head start with the possibilities introduced with the Law on the Continuity of Undertakings (WCO, Wet Continuïteit Ondernemingen) in 2009 to detect and remedy impending insolvency at an early stage through out-of-court solutions without negative publicity. For this to succeed, a public procedure is sometimes needed as a final step, the duration of which is kept as short as possible. That procedure then ends with a homologation judgement that provides legal certainty to all stakeholders involved in the reorganization.

In an English-language publication published last year, Louis Verstraeten has already provided an explanation of the pre-pack, together with an overview of the legislative amendments scheduled for 2021 and 2022.