スパンエアー: 自己破産か必要破産（債権者申立ての破産）か 航空会社スパンエアーは、去る1月27日金曜日、全便のキャンセルをアナウンスし、1月30日に自己破産の申立てを行なう意図があることを公表した。 初期の混乱の後、SEPLA（スペイン航空会社パイロット組合）は、スパンエアーの取るべき道として必要破産の申立てを行なう予定があるとの声明を出した。 On February 1st the request for voluntary insolvency proceedings of “special importance” of Spanair with more than 3000 creditors was admitted, among which were shareholders of amounts equivalent to € 260 million, as well as suppliers owed a total € 214 million. The total liabilities of Spanair amount to 474 million €. 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. II. The importance of the voluntary insolvency proceedings 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. Apart from the above, there are notable differences between compulsory and voluntary insolvency proceedings which shall be analysed below. Voluntary Insolvency 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. Compulsory insolvency 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 “inter vivos” acts, after maturity, during the six month period prior to filing. 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: • tax obligations payable during the three months preceding the application for insolvency proceedings; • Social Security contributions and other joint collection concepts during the same period; • wages and indemnifications and other benefits arising from labour relations corresponding to the last three monthly payments, and the origin, nature, amount, dates of acquisition and expiration, as well as the current credit situation, and shall attach documentary proof thereto. III. Judicial decision 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 “prior in tempore potior in iure – He who is before in time, is preferred in right” in order to determine which application should be admitted. By means of a court resolution dated February 1st 2012 the Judge of the Commercial Court number 10 of Barcelona, Mr. Juan Manuel de Castro Aragonés, 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 “when two credits filed at the same time relating to a single property are contradictory [–] the Courts shall decide which shall be given preference”. 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 “evident and abusive” 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. Finally the judge affirmed that the principle “pro operario – in favour of the worker” 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. より詳細な情報につきましては、下記までご連絡ください。 大友美加: otomo@vila.es
2012年2月28日
