Through the restructuring agreement, companies can address issues quickly and tailored to specific needs, in a regulated negotiation framework, allowing them to restructure their business and debts. The key issue in such scenario is to act preventive and on an early stage to avoid financial distress or even payment cessation.

This is a relatively new procedure, in this aspect EU Directive no. 2019/1023 coming to replace the ad hoc mandate procedure, retained by the practice as ineffective and used quite rarely by debtors. In the ad hoc mandate procedure, the debtor could have filed a request for the appointment of an ad hoc trustee with the president of the Tribunal. The object of the ad hoc mandate was to conclude, within 90 days of appointment, a settlement between the debtor and one or several of its creditors, in view of overcoming the state of difficulty of the debtor’s business.

The restructuring agreement represents, in fact, a contract proposed by the debtor and negotiated between the debtor and its creditors for the recovery of the business, there being similarities with the judicial reorganization plan both in terms of the data it must contain and in terms of voting by categories of creditors. After the creditors’ vote, the restructuring agreement must be confirmed by the syndic judge, in an urgent procedure.