Finding COMI in Group Insolvencies: Taking a Page from the Chapter 15 Playbook
It is widely known that US Bankruptcy judges have for some time been shaping their own, flexible and modern approach to finding COMI for foreign entities applying for Chapter 15 recognition. This approach has facilitated and safeguarded global cross-border restructurings of international business enterprise groups by helping the concentration of such proceedings in one jurisdiction – or at least facilitating that one proceeding takes precedence as main proceedings. This has not been the case in the EU where the recast European Insolvency Regulation’s COMI concept was not changed to facilitate group restructurings
In this technical paper the case is made that practitioners and judges in the EU block should try and take a page from the Americans’ playbook on finding COMI for groups. By applying similar criteria for finding COMI as under US Chapter 15 proceedings, it is submitted that the EIR could provide a real platform for international restructurings of multi-entity business enterprise groups – something it currently does not provide for.
INSOL International sincerely thanks Rob van den Sigtenhorst for this thought-provoking technical paper on finding COMI for groups in the context of the European Insolvency Regulation and the UNCTRAL Model Laws relating to insolvency.
This publication is now available for INSOL Members to view in the Library