I. Introduction<\/p>\n
On Friday \u00a0January 27th the airline Spanair announced the cancellation of all flights and expressed its intention to apply for voluntary insolvency proceedings on Monday January 30th. After initial uncertainty, SEPLA (the Spanish Union of Airline Pilots) announced that it would file for compulsory insolvency proceedings in an attempt to get a step ahead of the management of Spanair.<\/p>\n
On February 1st the request for voluntary insolvency proceedings of “special importance” of Spanair with more than 3000 creditors was admitted, among which were \u00a0shareholders of amounts equivalent to \u20ac 260 million, as well as suppliers owed a total \u20ac 214 million. The total liabilities of Spanair amount to 474 million \u20ac. On the labour front, the airline submitted an extinguishment dossier for a labour force adjustment plan (ERE) for Spanair employees, a total of 2,065 workers.<\/p>\n
II. \u00a0The importance of the voluntary insolvency proceedings<\/p>\n
The announcement of SEPLA caused obvious concern to the management of Spanair since in the case that the compulsory insolvency proceedings filed by SEPLA were admitted, the latter would take the lead in the whole process, and not the Spanair management, whose powers would be suspended, and would therefore be removed from the management of the airline.<\/p>\n
Apart from the above, there are notable differences between compulsory and voluntary insolvency proceedings which shall be analysed below.<\/p>\n
Voluntary Insolvency<\/p>\n
When a company files for voluntary insolvency proceedings within two months from the date upon which it knew of or should have known about its state of insolvency, the management thereof, with their powers intervened, continues to exercise executive functions and manage company assets. In this sense, the debtor exposed to an intervention, retains its decision-making faculties and, in general, the initiative for managing the business.<\/p>\n
Compulsory insolvency<\/p>\n
However, if compulsory insolvency is filed, the faculties of the administration organ of the debtor are suspended and it is removed from the management of the insolvency proceedings, which is assigned to the receivers. Likewise, the creditor who applies for compulsory insolvency proceedings receives a number of advantages over other creditors. The law, in order to promote the declaration of compulsory insolvency proceedings, favours the applicant by prioritising up to 50% of its credit. This is perhaps the main reason for the request of SEPLA. The creditor filing the application for compulsory insolvency proceedings, shall not have acquired the credits through \u201cinter vivos\u201d acts, after maturity, during the six month period prior to filing.<\/p>\n
In this sense, the creditor who applies for the insolvency proceedings shall state the title or deed upon which it bases its request, in accordance with Article 2.4 of the Insolvency Act, namely, non-payment by the debtor of:<\/p>\n
\u2022 tax obligations payable during the three months preceding the application for insolvency proceedings;<\/p>\n
\u2022 Social Security contributions and other joint collection concepts during the same period;<\/p>\n
\u2022 wages and indemnifications and other benefits arising from labour relations corresponding to the last three monthly payments,<\/p>\n
and the origin, nature, amount, dates of acquisition and expiration, as well as the current credit situation, and shall attach documentary proof thereto.<\/p>\n
III.\u00a0Judicial decision<\/p>\n
The fact of having filed both applications on the same day, January 30th 2012, gave rise to the problem of establishing which of the two applications had been filed first, and consequently, applying the principle of\u00a0\u201cprior in tempore potior in iure – He who is before in time, is preferred in right\u201d in order to determine which application should be admitted.<\/p>\n
By means of a court resolution dated \u00a0February 1st 2012 the Judge of the Commercial Court number 10 of Barcelona, Mr. Juan Manuel de Castro Aragon\u00e9s, based his competence for adopting the decision in the application of the analogy of article 422 of such a formalistic rule as the Mortgage Regulation which establishes that \u201cwhen two credits filed at the same time relating to a single property are contradictory [–] the Courts shall decide which shall be given preference\u201d.<\/p>\n
In this sense the judge understood that the voluntary insolvency application should be admitted given that the petition of SEPLA, filed only a few minutes before the voluntary bankruptcy proceedings respond only to the \u201cevident and abusive\u201d intentions of obtaining privileged status for its credit against creditors of the same class. Likewise, it suffered from obvious formal defects, unlike the voluntary insolvency application of Spanair.<\/p>\n
Finally the judge affirmed that the principle \u201cpro operario \u2013 in favour of the worker\u201d should be taken into consideration in the sense that the processing of the compulsory insolvency proceedings would hamper a quick agreement for the dismissal of employees, already filed for, with the evident lack of protection of the employees of the airline, whose expectations for a rapid solution and a successful reallocation would be failed.<\/p>\n
For more information, please contact:<\/p>\n
info@vila.es\/en<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I. Introduction On Friday \u00a0January 27th the airline Spanair announced the cancellation of all flights and expressed its intention to apply for voluntary insolvency proceedings on Monday January 30th. After initial uncertainty, SEPLA (the Spanish Union of Airline Pilots) announced that it would file for compulsory insolvency proceedings in an attempt to get a step […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[46],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1327","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n