A. DOMESTIC FAMILY OF COMPANIES
A bill aimed at modernising French insolvency law was adopted on 26 July 2005 by both the French Congress and Senate. As a result of the reform, which came into effect on 1 January 2006 (the ‘New Law’), three insolvency proceedings are now available for companies’ management, and for the court acting sua sponte, to handle the situation of troubled businesses:
1. If insolvency proceedings must be commenced for the family of companies, does your law permit a joint proceeding, ie, a single court file, a single judge, a single list of creditors, single notice list, or must the case for each member of the family proceed separately with no practical acknowledgment of the related proceedings?
Under French law, a corporation is deemed to be an autonomous and independent entity (principe de l’autonomie des personnes morales), and the company’s assets should, under normal circumstances, not be affected by insolvency proceedings commenced against other companies within the same group, provided the companies were incorporated as limited liability companies (SA, SAS, SARL, etc).
As a consequence, where insolvency proceedings must be commenced for several affiliated companies, there are no statutory or regulatory provisions that call for a joint proceeding.
However, the court can, under certain narrowly defined circumstances, find that there are grounds for a consolidation of estates so that the debts of two or more companies can be paid from a larger consolidated pool of assets (see below, question 6).
(a) What if the members of the family are organised under, or operate in, different locations within your country? Can a company from a distant location in your country commence its insolvency proceeding where its affiliate is located, if the affiliate has already commenced its insolvency proceeding?
Pursuant to Article 1 of Decree No 2005-1677 adopted on 28 December 2005 to implement the New Law, the court having territorial jurisdiction over insolvency matters is the court where the company’s head office is located.
When ‘interests at stake so require’, the Court of Appeal may sua sponte, or at the request of the public prosecutor, decide to ‘transfer’ an insolvency case to another commercial court within the remit of the Court of Appeal. Similarly, the French Supreme Court may refer the case to another court within the remit of another Court of Appeal (Article L. 662-2 of the Commercial Code).
Such transfer of proceedings is essentially aimed at coordinating procedures commenced against several companies within the same corporate family and at protecting group interests, wherever the head offices of members of the group may be located.
Among the criteria defined by case law as grounds for a centralisation of various insolvency proceedings commenced against group companies, one can list:
When the head office is located abroad, proceedings must be commenced before the court in the jurisdiction in France in which the main centre of the foreign company’s interests is located.
(b) To the extent your country has different types of insolvency proceedings (such as Chapter 11 reorganisation and Chapter 7 liquidation in the US), do the members of the corporate family all have to proceed under the same type of proceeding?
Pursuant to the principe d’autonomie des personnes morales (see above, question 1), each company within a group must commence separate insolvency proceedings. Accordingly, there is no specific reason members of a corporate family should be subject to the same type of bankruptcy proceeding (rehabilitation, liquidation, etc). When they do, the court usually appoints the same court agent (trustee, liquidator, etc) for the sake of efficiency (see below question 2).
Where a consolidation is ordered, the various insolvency proceedings are merged into one single procedure, the effective date of the joint procedure (used eg, for example, for voidance purposes) being the opening date of the proceedings of the first company to have filed. A single judgment will be rendered, encompassing the various companies included in the consolidation.
2. Does your law permit, or prohibit, a single administrator/trustee/ receiver to administer the assets and the liabilities of the entire corporate family?
Unless the court orders a consolidation of proceedings, members of a group of companies are subject to separate insolvency proceedings. Accordingly, a trustee (or liquidator) is appointed in each proceeding to assist or, as the case may be, replace the management and administer the company’s assets.
In practice, however, the same trustee/liquidator is appointed by the court.
(a) If so, is there a hearing for the court to determine whether the administration by a single party is appropriate? Are secured and unsecured creditors or other parties in interest allowed to object or be heard at such hearing?
As mentioned above, no statutory or regulatory provisions provide for the appointment of a single trustee/liquidator for insolvent companies within a group.
The trustee (or, as the case may be, the liquidator) is appointed by the insolvency court immediately, after an initial hearing (which is usually preceded by a short-form investigation (enquête) led by a commercial court judge, either after a filing or after the court was notified of difficulties by the auditors). The court can also order an investigation sua sponte. The debtor and the employees’ representative are invited to attend such hearing; the court may also hear any expert witness. The Public Prosecutor is the sole person authorised to file an appeal against the appointment of a particular trustee or liquidator.
(b) What about joint representation by other professionals, such as law firms or accounting or auditing firms?
As a general rule, no statutory or regulatory provisions prohibit the joint representation by legal advisors or accounting or auditing firms of several companies within a corporate family. However, to avoid any conflicts of interests, it may be recommended under certain circumstances that each insolvent company be represented by its own legal counsel.
3. Does your law encourage or discourage overlapping boards or management teams for separate members of a corporate family?
In order to ensure transparent and effective management of corporations, French law tends to prohibit overlapping boards between several non-affiliated companies. Pursuant to Article
L. 225-21 of the Commercial Code, no individual may concurrently hold more than five directorships of limited liability companies having their head offices located in France.
These provisions are, however, subject to certain exemptions for members of a corporate family: the above limitation does not apply to directorships or supervisory board membership of ‘controlling’ or ‘controlled’ companies. Under French law, a company ‘A’ is deemed to be controlled by a company ‘C’ when one of the following tests is met:
More specifically, directorships of companies whose shares are not quoted on a regulated stock market and are held by a single company are accounted for as one directorship, for the computation of the maximum of five directorships.
(a) If the directors of a parent company are not directors of the subsidiary, but they either directly or indirectly manage the affairs of the subsidiary anyway, do your country’s laws render such people de facto or ‘shadow ‘directors of the subsidiary?
De facto directorship is not defined by any French statutory or regulatory provisions. Courts have however repeatedly held that a de facto director is any individual (or corporate entity since such entity can as such be a director) that, in practice, exercises a positive action and/or takes independent and repeated management in the company, irrespective of whether such person is a shareholder of the company or not.
(b) Do the duties or responsibilities of officers or directors of a family of companies change when the companies become insolvent? For example does their duty shift from a responsibility to the shareholders to a responsibility to the creditors. What if only one of the companies is insolvent?
In rescue proceedings, the debtor remains in possession to operate the business and prepare a rescue plan (plan de sauvegarde). The trustee is simply in charge of assisting the company’s management and cannot deprive the management of its responsibilities.
In rehabilitation proceedings, the scope of the trustee’s role is determined by the initial court order. The trustee may simply assist the management (95 per cent of the cases) or he/she may be appointed to take control of the company’s management, either in whole or in part. This happens when the court finds ab initio clear evidence of mismanagement as a reason for the default.
In liquidation proceedings, the liquidator has the sole authority to bind the company. Where the sale of the business, either in whole or in part, seems possible, business activities are pursued and the liquidator takes over the entire management responsibility until a disposal plan (plan de cession) is ready. For large companies, a trustee may also be appointed by the court to run the business during the period of preparation of the plan de cession.
Should one only (or several) of the companies of the group file, the duties and responsibilities of the officers or directors of affiliated solvent companies remain unaffected.
4. Are there rules and do they change regarding members of the corporate family transferring assets among one another (such as by way of loans, capitalisation, other transactions) when the members are insolvent?
In rehabilitation proceedings or judicial liquidation, any transactions entered into during the so-called hardening period (including the transactions entered into with members of the same corporate family) may be subject to clawback provisions. The hardening period runs from the date on which the company is deemed to be insolvent, and can be backdated by the court by up to 18 months before the insolvency judgment. Should the rehabilitation or liquidation proceedings be preceded by a pre-bankruptcy work-out (conciliation), the insolvency date cannot be backdated to a date prior to the court order approving the workout agreement (see below question 9(c)).
The following transactions are automatically void if performed during the hardening period:
payments, in any form, made on account of debts that have not fallen due;
payments on account of matured debts made by any means other than the following:
Any payment for matured debts or any transaction for consideration (acte á titre onéreux) concluded during the hardening period is also subject to optional (ie, a court decision is necessary upon petition by the trustee, the liquidator or the prosecutor essentially) voidance, if proper evidence is brought before the court that, at the time of the payment or of the transaction, the contracting party knew, or was in a position to know, of the company’s insolvency. When dealing with intra-group transactions, such knowledge is presumed for companies belonging to the same corporate group.
(a) Are cash sweep procedures allowed, that is, cash from all subsidiaries is swept out to one account controlled by one of the family entities and then redistributed among family members?
As an exception to the banking monopoly rule which forbids non-banks to extend credit, cash poolings in corporate groups are allowed provided that the company pooling the cash has direct or indirect capital links with the other group companies and that such capital links confer on one of the group companies effective control (see Art L. 511-7-3 of the Monetary and Commercial Code) over the others.
(b) What if the redistribution results in a healthy subsidiary funding the shortfalls in another subsidiary that is losing money?
Prior to the 2005 reform, courts ruled that a lender (including, in principle, a parent, or affiliate having regularly, over a given period, ‘perfused’ a subsidiary of the group) might be held liable to indemnify creditors, in whole or in part, if such lender had (i) granted new funding facilities (or even simply failed to accelerate and/or demand payment of existing ones in default) and (ii), in doing so, created a misleading appearance of solvency in favour of a company which was actually beyond any prospect of recovery.
Even though decisions that were really costly for the banks were scarce, enough decisions were given on the lender liability ground to end up creating a credit-crunch in the field of distressed companies financing: thus the need for a reform.
The new statute creates, for ‘lenders’ of all sorts, an exemption of lender liability except in the following circumstances:
Parent or affiliate companies perfusing a member of their group are now quasi-immune from an attack based on lender liability grounds, except where the mother company for example interfered on a regular basis in the management decisions of the subsidiary or affiliate.
Parent or affiliate companies which funded a loss-making subsidiary and which would fall under one of the exceptions to the new immunity rule may, in addition to an attack through a lender liability action based on interference, still face civil and, as the case may be, criminal liability, if the affiliate’s management or directors acted as de jure or de facto managers/directors of the subsidiary (see below question 9(b)).
Although essentially based on the same source of liability, ie, the shadow directorship theory, the amount of damages to which a parent company having acted as shadow manager/director of a subsidiary could be sentenced to pay in a lender liability action alone should normally be less than the total of unsatisfied liabilities, since only damages directly resulting from the unjustifiable support of the affiliate could be borne by the mother. It is likely, however, that under the new regime, both actions will be introduced at the same time against the shadow director(s)/manager(s).
5. How does your law treat claims of one member of a corporate family against other members of the corporate family?
Claims held by affiliates of an insolvent corporation are subject to the same provisions as those regulating any other creditor’s claims.
(a) Are such claims invalid or unenforceable?
General rules governing proof of claim, validity and enforceability of claims are applicable to claims held by a member of a corporate family against other insolvent companies within the group.
The judgment opening insolvency proceedings automatically stays all enforcement proceedings. The stay applies to all creditors, including members of the same corporate family.
Within two months following publication in a legal gazette of the judgment opening insolvency proceedings (or four months for non-French creditors), all creditors – including affiliates of the insolvent company – other than employees must file a proof of claim or risk being time-barred.
As mentioned above, transactions entered into with affiliates during the hardening period, ie while the debtor was insolvent, may also be subject to voidance/clawback provisions.
(b) If not, are such claims on equal footing with those of third party creditors, or are they subordinated, or is there other treatment required or permitted under your law?
There is no statutory subordination of inter-company debts under French law. Unless otherwise agreed between the debtor, the senior creditor and the junior creditors, loans extended to a French company by one of its affiliates are treated pari passu with other debts of such company.
6. Does your law allow for the pooling of assets and liabilities of all members of the corporate family, so that a creditor of one member becomes, in essence, a creditor of all members (sometimes referred to as ‘substantive consolidation’).
Article L. 621–2 of the Commercial Code provides that a consolidation of insolvency proceedings may be ordered by the court so that debts of different companies can be paid from a larger consolidated pool of assets when either of the following conditions is met:
The insolvency of the companies concerned is not a condition precedent to a consolidation of proceedings: provided one of the above tests is met, insolvency proceedings opened against one insolvent company can be extended to other solvent companies.
(a) If so, is such pooling automatic or does it require a factual showing and court involvement?
The petitioner must prove that one of the conditions for consolidation is met (see above).
Commingling of estates
When assets and liabilities of two (or more) companies are so commingled that, from an accounting or commercial point of view, it is impossible to distinguish the assets and liabilities of one company from the assets and liabilities of the other(s), there are grounds for a consolidation of the insolvency proceedings.
The existence of such a commingling of assets usually results from a finding by the court that two tests, theoretically alternative but most of the time used cumulatively by courts, are met: (i) a commingling of accounts and/or (ii) abnormal finance streams.
Fiction
A fictitious company is to be found when a legal entity has no real existence because it is acting as a mere front for another.
Theoretically, this could be found where one of the essential elements of the contract to form a company (see Art 1832 of the French Civil Code), ie, the actual intent to share profits and losses, is missing. Most of the time, however, it is brought about by fraud.
The tests for a finding of a fictitious company are diverse in case law, and generally include
(i) having the same directors on the two boards, (ii) having the same shareholders, and (iii) maintaining, without any real benefit/compensation/consideration exchanged, financial links such as cash-pooling arrangements or any type of transaction which was clearly not entered into at arm’s length.
(b) What proceedings (motion, request, trial, etc) are required for the court to order the pooling of assets and liabilities?
Article L. 621–2 of the Commercial Code provides that the court opening the initial insolvency proceedings shall have jurisdiction to consolidate such proceedings with those of one or several other companies.
In two recent decisions dated 15 May 2001 and 19 February 2002, the French Supreme Court ruled that creditors are prohibited from requesting a consolidation. Indeed, the legal aim of such action is to protect the interests of the company’s creditors as a whole and can only be initiated at the request of the trustee, ie, of the mandataire judiciaire which is the new name since 1 January 2006 of the former creditors’ representative or, as the case may be, the liquidator.
Moreover French courts have repeatedly ruled that a consolidation can still be ordered against companies that are already subject to isolated, autonomous pending insolvency proceedings, provided no rehabilitation plan or sale plan has yet been adopted.
(c) Does your country’s law contemplate any partial pooling of assets and liabilities?
No.
(d) If the pooling of assets and liabilities is called for, are there any protections for certain types of creditors, such as creditors with a lien or other security interest in particular assets?
Where a consolidation of insolvency proceedings is ordered by the court, the creditors of all consolidated companies must file proof of claim and are subject to the same joint proceeding including proofs of claims verification procedures. As a result, the combined creditors’ list provides for a unique ranking of all creditors, whether secured or unsecured, and such combined list is used in order to decide which claims will be satisfied pursuant to their respective priority.
As a general rule, secured creditors benefit from a priority over the proceeds of the secured asset’s sale (subject however to the so-called ‘superpriority’ protecting the employees for a portion of their unpaid salaries’ claims trustee/liquidator, judicial costs and post-petition claims). In addition, the insolvency judge may authorise the debtor or, as the case may be, the trustee, to pay certain debts arisen before the insolvency judgment in order to obtain the release of a security or the free use of an asset legitimately retained provided said withdrawal is required to enable the continuation of the business.
Where judicial liquidation is ordered, the claims secured by a mortgage over real estate property, a pledge over movable assets benefiting from a retention right or a specific registered lien over property, plant or equipment rank ahead of all post-petition claims.
7. How are secured creditors treated with respect to a family of companies? For instance, if a creditor has a security interest in the assets of one member of the family, and a guarantee from another member of the family, are both such claims valid in insolvency proceedings of the entire family?
As mentioned above, except where consolidation is ordered by the court, French law does not provide per se for a single insolvency proceeding with respect to group companies. As a consequence, the creditor must file a proof of claim in each proceeding opened against each insolvent company within the group.
8. Do your laws or courts provide for post-insolvency commencement of new financing that allows continued operation of the business and provides adequate protection to the lender who made the loan? Explain.
In rescue proceedings and rehabilitation proceedings, post-petition creditors must be paid, when their debts become due and payable, out of cash generated by post-filing activities. If they cannot be immediately so paid, post-petition debts (including those resulting from post-petition financing) rank ahead of both unsecured and secured pre-petition debts, subject to some exceptions, provided these post-petition claims arose:
There are a few exceptions to the general rule that post-petition creditors are always paid before pre-petition creditors. The following pre-petition claims always rank ahead of post-filing claims: (i) the employees’ super-privileged claims, (ii) judicial costs, and, if any,
(iii) claims of lenders that extended credit to the debtor within the framework of a court-approved conciliation (see question 9(c)).
The same ranking applies in judicial liquidation, except that pre-petition claims secured by a mortgage over real estate property, a pledge over movable assets benefiting from a retention right or a specific registered lien over property, plant or equipment benefit from a priority of payment over post-petition claims.
The following ranking shall apply among post-petition creditors:
As far as protection to the lender who made the post-petition loan is concerned, it is, in practice, immune from any lender liability since it is generally the trustee who requires the organisation of the new facility and shares the drawing rights with the management, if such is left in place, or alone if otherwise.
9. Are directors and officers subject to civil or criminal sanctions if:
(a) In case of fraud, or misrepresentation of a company’s actual financial situation?
In the framework of insolvency proceedings, de jure or de facto directors and managers can face civil and criminal liability for fraud or misrepresentation of the company’s finances.
Civil liability
Where, as a result of management errors, assets of a bankrupt company are insufficient to cover its liabilities, de jure or de facto directors and managers can be held liable to pay an indemnity covering all or part of the debts of the bankrupt company. As this action can only be used when assets are insufficient to cover liabilities, it only applies in the case of judicial liquidation or early termination of a rescue plan or a rehabilitation plan.
More specifically, the Commercial Code provides that, where judicial liquidation is ordered, de jure or de facto managers who have contributed to the company’s insolvency by embezzling or concealing all or part of the company’s assets or fraudulently increasing the company’s liabilities, can be sentenced to pay all or part of the company’s liabilities.
A sanction known as ‘personal bankruptcy’ (faillite personnelle) can also be imposed against individual de jure or de facto managers who have, inter alia, concealed accounting documents, failed to keep proper and accurate accounting books or misrepresented the company’s finances. Managers and directors found liable of the above can be forbidden from managing any other business or company for up to 15 years and be barred from applying for and/or holding any public office for up to five years.
Criminal liability
Criminal sanctions can be imposed on de jure and/or de facto directors and managers who have kept fictitious, manifestly incomplete, or irregular accounting books, or who have concealed accounting documents.
The Commercial Code provides for criminal sanctions of up to five years’ imprisonment and a maximum €75,000 fine against individuals. Against corporate entities which acted as de jure or de facto directors/managers, the sanction is a fine of €375,000 and other possible additional sanctions including winding up, judicial monitoring or publication of the criminal judgment.
(b) They allow the company to continue to operate while knowing it does not have the ability to pay the debt being incurred?
Under French law, the management must file for bankruptcy no later than 45 days from the date on which the company becomes insolvent, provided no conciliation proceedings preceded the filing (until 31 December 2005 this was 15 days). If not, de jure and, if any, de facto directors or managers may be held personally liable (on both civil and criminal grounds) if it can be demonstrated that they allowed the company to continue to trade whilst insolvent.
Civil liability
De jure and/or de facto directors and managers who have failed to file for bankruptcy within 45 days and allowed the company to continue to trade whilst insolvent may be sentenced to pay all or part of the liabilities of the bankrupt company.
Moreover, if it can be demonstrated that de jure or de facto managers have allowed the company to operate a loss-making business to further their own interests, knowing that this would lead to the company’s insolvency, such managers can be placed into personal bankruptcy and be declared incapable of, inter alia, directing, managing, running, controlling, directly or indirectly, any corporate body or business. Such interdiction can also be ordered against managers who have simply failed to file for bankruptcy within 45 days (provided no conciliation proceedings have been commenced).
Criminal liability
Criminal sanctions can be imposed on de jure and/or de facto managers who have made certain decisions or who have acted in ways detrimental to the company’s interests, including avoiding or delaying insolvency proceedings through obtaining credit at significantly higher than commercial rates (‘ruinous means’) or selling assets at non arm’s length value. The Commercial Code provides for criminal sanctions of up to five years’ imprisonment and a maximum €75,000 fine against individuals. Against corporate entities which acted as de jure or de facto directors/managers, the sanction is a fine of €375,000 and possible additional sanctions including winding up, judicial monitoring or publication of the criminal judgment.
In practice, there are, in pre-2006 case law, few examples of liability on these grounds.
(c) Same as (b) above but the directors believe that if some event occurs (eg chance to obtain new contract in prospect, new equity infusion, or new financing) it will be able to save the company and pay its bills?
If the directors believe that a new financing and/or new equity infusion may be a solution to the company’s difficulties, they may request the commencement of conciliation proceedings. Conciliation proceedings are voluntary and non-coercive proceedings aimed at reaching, under the supervision of a court-appointed agent (conciliateur), a work-out agreement (protocole de conciliation) between the company and its creditors. Conciliation proceedings are available to any debtor who faces legal, economic or financial difficulties and, as the case may be, is insolvent for fewer than 45 days.
Conciliation proceedings do not automatically stay creditors from collecting their claims against the debtor. However, creditors (usually small ones) which attempt to enforce their rights while the conciliation is still in progress can be forced by the court, at the debtor’s request, to accept a moratorium for up to two years.
A work-out agreement sets out any new loans extended by old or new creditors or shareholders, and any agreements by creditors to grant waivers, rescheduling or cancellation of existing debts.
In order to prompt creditors to extend credit, the new insolvency law granted to providers of new money not only a priority of payment but also a protection against future clawback in the framework of a court-approved work-out agreement.
Where no solution can be found to improve the company’s situation and keep it out of bankruptcy (for instance through negotiation with creditors and/or stockholders), the only step that should be taken by directors to minimise the liability risk would be to file for bankruptcy as soon as the insolvency situation comes to their knowledge.
B. INTERNATIONAL FAMILY OF COMPANIES
1. If one or more members of the corporate family is incorporated under or governed by the laws of another country, does that change your answers to any of the questions set forth above?
Subject to the developments below (see question 2), the same rules apply, ie, separate insolvency proceedings are commenced against each insolvent company having its head office or the centre of its main interests situated in France. The grounds for a consolidation of estates would remain unchanged (ie, commingling of estates or fiction). Inter-company claims are subject to the rules applicable to any other creditors’ claims (except that non-French creditors have a further two-month extension to file a proof of claim) and the clawback provisions governing transactions entered into during the hardening period are also applicable.
2. If insolvency/restructuring proceedings are instituted for corporate family members in different countries:
(a) What controls as to where the case must be filed (eg, centre of main interests, principal place of business, location of parent, etc)?
EC Regulation No 1346 of 29 May 2000 on insolvency proceedings (the ‘EC Regulation’) provides for the recognition of insolvency proceedings commenced in another European Member State.
The courts of a Member State within the territory of which the centre of a debtor’s main interests is situated have jurisdiction to open insolvency proceedings (Art 3, se 1 of the EC Regulation). The place of the head office of a legal entity is presumed to be the centre of its main interests in the absence of proof to the contrary. Secondary proceedings can be opened subsequently in another Member State to liquidate the assets of a branch located in such Member State.
For non-European foreign corporations, French courts having jurisdiction to open insolvency proceedings are those in the jurisdiction in which the main centre of the company’s interests in France is located.
(b) Do the courts attempt to exercise jurisdiction over the assets of the company filing domestically no matter where located (for example, overseas), or do they limit their jurisdiction to only those assets located in your country?
French courts apply the so-called rule of universalité de patrimoine, ie, that the estate is considered ‘as a whole’. As a result, the court having jurisdiction to overview insolvency proceedings also has jurisdiction over all the assets of the debtor wherever located, in France or abroad.
This sort of long-arm jurisdiction rule may be subject to some exceptions for assets located in European Member States, where so-called secondary proceedings may be opened to liquidate corporate assets of branches operating in another Member State.
(c) Would your courts enforce a court order from a foreign country that attempted to exercise jurisdiction over assets located in your country but owned by the company that is subject to the foreign insolvency proceedings?
If insolvency judgments are ordered in a jurisdiction that is party to a bilateral convention with France, those judgments are recognised and enforceable in France.
If there is no applicable convention, foreign judgments rendered outside of the European Union can only be enforced in France if they have been subject to a review procedure called exequatur which is a limited review only aimed at verifying, for example, the proper jurisdiction of the foreign court, compliance with international public policy and the absence of fraud. Once such review procedure is completed, the order rendered by a foreign court would be enforceable in France, eg, the exequatured order would allow the creditor to take enforcement actions over assets located in France owned by the corporation subject to foreign insolvency proceedings.
Article 16.1 of the EC Regulation provides that any judgment opening insolvency proceedings handed down by a court of a European Member State that has jurisdiction must be recognised in all other European Member States from the time it becomes effective in the state where the proceedings were commenced (ie, the state of the main proceedings).
(d) Has your country adopted any procedures (such as the Model Law on Cross-Border Insolvency) to address the various issues that arise in dealing with cases of cross-border insolvency?
France is party to some bilateral conventions relating to insolvency proceedings, such as the convention between France and Monaco dated 13 September 1950.
As mentioned above, France is also party to the EC Regulation No 1346 of 29 May 2000 on insolvency proceedings.
France has not yet adopted the UNCITRAL 1997 Model Law on Cross-Border Insolvency.
