Bankruptcy costs and the design of preventive procedures

A European directive requires Member States to give firms access to preventive restructuring procedures. This paper assesses the benefits of having a procedure that is distinct from that for insolvent firms. It is based on the French experience, where a preventive procedure has coexisted alongside the more common restructuring procedure since 2006. The spatial and temporal heterogeneity of the commercial courts' decisions allows the identification of the causal impact of the conversion from the preventive procedure to the common one on the firm's survival chances. Using an (almost) exhaustive sample of preventive bankruptcy filings over 2010–2016, we show that conversion reduces the probability of firm survival by 50 percentage points, which corresponds to indirect bankruptcy costs of around 20% of the firm's assets. Our interpretation is that the low restructuring rate under the common bankruptcy procedure may alarm some of the firm's stakeholders, especially its customers. This in turn aggravates the firm's difficulties and reduces its chances of restructuring under the common procedure. We provide some empirical evidence to support this interpretation. A distinct preventive procedure helps prevent this spiral.