IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/rug/rugwps/08-509.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The Role of Firm Viability, Creditor Behavior and Judicial Discretion in the Failure of Distressed Firms under Courtsupervised Restructuring: Evidence from Belgium

Author

Listed:
  • B. LEYMAN
  • K. SCHOORS
  • P. COUSSEMENT

Abstract

Unlike Chapter 11 in the U.S., the Belgian reorganization legislation requires that distressed firms remain under court-supervision during plan execution. In principle, the court-supervised post confirmation stage takes a fixed period of 24 months. Using a unique sample of small Belgian firms, we analyze both the likelihood of failure and the time spent before transfer to bankruptcy-liquidation during this post-confirmation stage. More profitable debtors are less likely to fail. If banks are secured by collateral with high liquidation value, debtors are more likely to fail. The mandatory repayment of government debt, like unpaid taxes and social contributions, also renders the distressed firm more likely to fail. Judicial discretion sharply affects the likelihood of failure in a sub sample of individual debtors seeking to preserve a sole proprietorship.

Suggested Citation

  • B. Leyman & K. Schoors & P. Coussement, 2008. "The Role of Firm Viability, Creditor Behavior and Judicial Discretion in the Failure of Distressed Firms under Courtsupervised Restructuring: Evidence from Belgium," Working Papers of Faculty of Economics and Business Administration, Ghent University, Belgium 08/509, Ghent University, Faculty of Economics and Business Administration.
    • Handle: RePEc:rug:rugwps:08/509
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://wps-feb.ugent.be/Papers/wp_08_509.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Hotchkiss, Edith Shwalb, 1995. "Postbankruptcy Performance and Management Turnover," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 50(1), pages 3-21, March.
    2. Arturo Bris & Ivo Welch & Ning Zhu, 2006. "The Costs of Bankruptcy: Chapter 7 Liquidation versus Chapter 11 Reorganization," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 61(3), pages 1253-1303, June.
    3. Bergstrom, Clas & Eisenberg, Theodore & Sundgren, Stefan, 2002. "Secured debt and the likelihood of reorganization," International Review of Law and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 21(4), pages 359-372, May.
    4. Nico Dewaelheyns & Cynthia Van Hulle, 2006. "Corporate Failure Prediction Modeling: Distorted by Business Groups' Internal Capital Markets?," Journal of Business Finance & Accounting, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 33(5‐6), pages 909-931, June.
    5. Fisher, Timothy C G & Martel, Jocelyn, 1995. "The Creditors' Financial Reorganization Decision: New Evidence from Canadian Data," The Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization, Oxford University Press, vol. 11(1), pages 112-126, April.
    6. White, Michelle J, 1994. "Corporate Bankruptcy as a Filtering Device: Chapter 11 Reorganizations and Out-of-Court Debt Restructurings," The Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization, Oxford University Press, vol. 10(2), pages 268-295, October.
    7. Timothy C.G. Fisher & Jocelyn Martel, 2004. "Empirical Estimates of Filtering Failure in Court‐Supervised Reorganization," Journal of Empirical Legal Studies, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 1(1), pages 143-164, March.
    8. Julian Franks & Oren Sussman, 2005. "Financial Distress and Bank Restructuring of Small to Medium Size UK Companies," Review of Finance, European Finance Association, vol. 9(1), pages 65-96.
    9. White, Michelle J, 1989. "The Corporate Bankruptcy Decision," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 3(2), pages 129-151, Spring.
    10. Fisher, Timothy C G & Martel, Jocelyn, 1999. "Should We Abolish Chapter 11? Evidence from Canada," The Journal of Legal Studies, University of Chicago Press, vol. 28(1), pages 233-257, January.
    11. Mario Cleves & William W. Gould & Roberto G. Gutierrez & Yulia Marchenko, 2010. "An Introduction to Survival Analysis Using Stata," Stata Press books, StataCorp LP, edition 3, number saus3, March.
    12. Julian Franks & Oren Sussman, 2005. "Financial Distress and Bank Restructuring of Small to Medium Size UK Companies," Review of Finance, Springer, vol. 9(1), pages 65-96, March.
    13. Timothy C. G. Fisher & Jocelyn Martel, 1994. "Will the Bankruptcy Reform Work? An Empirical Analysis of Financial Reorganization in Canada," Canadian Public Policy, University of Toronto Press, vol. 20(3), pages 265-277, September.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Dewaelheyns, Nico & Van Hulle, Cynthia, 2009. "Filtering speed in a Continental European reorganization procedure," International Review of Law and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 29(4), pages 375-387, December.
    2. B. Leyman & K. Schoors & P. Coussement, 2008. "Court-supervised Restructuring: Pre-bankruptcy Dynamics, Debt Structure and Debt Rescheduling," Working Papers of Faculty of Economics and Business Administration, Ghent University, Belgium 08/507, Ghent University, Faculty of Economics and Business Administration.
    3. Goodwin, John & Routledge, James, 2021. "Determinants of the duration of the voluntary administration process: An unconditional quantile regression analysis," Journal of Contemporary Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 17(3).

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Leyman, Bart & Schoors, Koen J.L. & Coussement, Peter, 2011. "Does court-supervised reorganization work? Evidence from post-confirmation firm failure," International Review of Law and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 31(3), pages 149-168, September.
    2. Bart Leyman, 2012. "The uneasy case for rehabilitating small firms under the 1997-reorganization law in Belgium: evidence from reorganization plans," European Journal of Law and Economics, Springer, vol. 34(3), pages 533-560, December.
    3. Dewaelheyns, Nico & Van Hulle, Cynthia, 2009. "Filtering speed in a Continental European reorganization procedure," International Review of Law and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 29(4), pages 375-387, December.
    4. B. Leyman & K. Schoors & P. Coussement, 2008. "Court-supervised Restructuring: Pre-bankruptcy Dynamics, Debt Structure and Debt Rescheduling," Working Papers of Faculty of Economics and Business Administration, Ghent University, Belgium 08/507, Ghent University, Faculty of Economics and Business Administration.
    5. Antill, Samuel, 2022. "Do the right firms survive bankruptcy?," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 144(2), pages 523-546.
    6. Blazy, Régis & Martel, Jocelyn & Nigam, Nirjhar, 2014. "The choice between informal and formal restructuring: The case of French banks facing distressed SMEs," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 44(C), pages 248-263.
    7. Blazy, Régis & Letaief, Aziza, 2017. "When secured and unsecured creditors recover the same: The emblematic case of the Tunisian corporate bankruptcies," Emerging Markets Review, Elsevier, vol. 30(C), pages 19-41.
    8. Blazy, Régis & Esquerré, Stéphane, 2021. "The CV effect: To what extent does the chance to reorganize depend on a bankruptcy judge’s profile?," International Review of Law and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 66(C).
    9. Gilles Recasens, 2003. "Faut-il adopter un système pro-créanciers de défaillances? Une revue de la littérature," Revue Finance Contrôle Stratégie, revues.org, vol. 6(1), pages 119-153, March.
    10. Sofie Balcaen & Sophie Manigart & Jozefien Buyze & Hubert Ooghe, 2012. "Firm exit after distress: differentiating between bankruptcy, voluntary liquidation and M&A," Small Business Economics, Springer, vol. 39(4), pages 949-975, November.
    11. Régis Blazy & Nirjhar Nigam, 2019. "Corporate insolvency procedures in England: the uneasy case for liquidations," European Journal of Law and Economics, Springer, vol. 47(1), pages 89-123, February.
    12. Jocelyn Martel, 1996. "Solutions au stress financier : Un survol de la littérature," CIRANO Working Papers 96s-03, CIRANO.
    13. Simeon Djankov & Oliver Hart & Caralee McLiesh & Andrei Shleifer, 2008. "Debt Enforcement around the World," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 116(6), pages 1105-1149, December.
    14. Fisher, Timothy C.G. & Martel, Jocelyn & Gavious, Ilanit, 2016. "Tax claims, government priority, absolute priority and the resolution of financial distress," International Review of Law and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 48(C), pages 50-58.
    15. Agrawal, Ashwini & González-Uribe, Juanita & Martínez-Correa, Jimmy, 2022. "Measuring the ex-ante incentive effects of creditor control rights during bankruptcy reorganization," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 143(1), pages 381-408.
    16. Timothy C.G. Fisher & Jocelyn Martel, 2004. "Empirical Estimates of Filtering Failure in Court‐Supervised Reorganization," Journal of Empirical Legal Studies, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 1(1), pages 143-164, March.
    17. Martel, Jocelyn, 1996. "Solutions au stress financier," L'Actualité Economique, Société Canadienne de Science Economique, vol. 72(1), pages 51-78, mars.
    18. Sundgren, Stefan & Alexeyeva, Irina, 2022. "Entrepreneurs’ legal infractions and hidden information: Evidence from small business bankruptcies," International Review of Law and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 69(C).
    19. Xavier Giné & Inessa Love, 2010. "Do Reorganization Costs Matter for Efficiency? Evidence from a Bankruptcy Reform in Colombia," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 53(4), pages 833-864.
    20. Erkki Laitinen, 2011. "Assessing viability of Finnish reorganization and bankruptcy firms," European Journal of Law and Economics, Springer, vol. 31(2), pages 167-198, April.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    court-supervised reorganization; bankruptcy; insolvency legislation;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • G33 - Financial Economics - - Corporate Finance and Governance - - - Bankruptcy; Liquidation
    • G38 - Financial Economics - - Corporate Finance and Governance - - - Government Policy and Regulation
    • K20 - Law and Economics - - Regulation and Business Law - - - General

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:rug:rugwps:08/509. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Nathalie Verhaeghe (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/ferugbe.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.