9fin’s distress team proudly presents: Distressed year in review 2023 — legal report.

We couldn’t let the festive season pass us by without getting you a present, so we thought we’d put together a review of 2023 focused on the legal side of the distressed world.

Rather than put together an exhaustive list of all the legal developments and significant restructurings across Europe, our report is intended to highlight key legal developments from the year in a handful of European jurisdictions.

Our report comprises the following sections:

• Bedding-in of new European processes — we take a look at some of the key cases in Spain, Germany, the Netherlands, Italy and France to get a sense of how each country’s implementation of the European Restructuring and Insolvency Directive differs through the lens of some of the key cases in each jurisdiction
• The year of the contested UK Restructuring Plan — 2023 was the year of the contested restructuring plan in the UK, we take a look at some of the key cases (Adler, Nasmyth, Gas, Prezzo, and Fitness First) and dole out our key takeaways
• Cross-border recognition developments — lastly, we take a look at where all good international restructurings should end: recognition. We delve into some of the issues surrounding recognition of UK restructuring processes post-Brexit, the rise of parallel proceedings and whether the UK insolvency service will attempt to re-ignite the Article X debate in the new year

This report is intended to be read alongside our Distressed year in review 2023 — credit report, which you can find right here.