Conditions for Creditors to Exercise Special Rights during Reorganization

The business reorganization regulation has traditionally been associated with creditor’s rights protection. The main difficulty in this case lies in the fact that in attempts to provide comprehensive protection of creditors to prevent them from losing the main thing for which the reorganization is needed—in fact, to enable enterprises to adapt to changing economic conditions—because in the presence of excessively burdensome rules, entrepreneurs will not be able or not want to take advantage of such a legal regime. In other words, any law and order is forced to seek a balance between the interests of reorganized entities and creditors. The Russian doctrine is largely isolated from the European tradition and focuses on the discussion of private issues of the application of Russian rules and lacks clear conceptual guidelines for development of these very rules. Special rights that the creditor has in connection with the reorganization of the company constitute the basis for the protection of the creditor’s legitimate interests. The shortcomings of domestic rules give rise to practical problems in the implementation of reorganizations. The creditor’s exercise of special rights during reorganization creates many risks for the company. In this regard, all legal orders impose restrictions on creditors exercising their rights. The paper discusses expedient restrictions of such rights on the basis of the European doctrine.

The author concludes that each law and order has developed its own restrictions regarding the circle of creditors protected during reorganization. Concurrently, from the point of view of the previously considered rationale for the protection of creditors the only restrictions we can justify are the restrictions on the exercise of special rights in the event of reorganization of those creditors whose obligations arose after the reorganization started (disclosure of information about reorganization), as well as creditors who have other means of protecting their legitimate interests (for example, a counter-non-performance objection or the right to demand termination of the contract).

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