On June 27^th 2015 the new Decree Law on civil and bankruptcy law, approved by the Council of Minister only four days before, was published in the Official Gazette of the Italian Republic. To understand the purpose of the legislative, it is enough to read the press release published by the Council of Ministers on the same day of approval of the text of the law; the Ministers, in fact, reported that all the measures set in the reform in question move from a common principle: “a company with problems risks dragging with it other companies (suppliers of goods and services and financial intermediaries) continuing to contract obligations that can not meet. Promptly address cases of corporate crisis can limit the losses of the economy, both in size strictly business both financially, or to restructure the company, with benefits in terms employment and, more generally, safeguarding the economic fabric contiguous”.

The news introduced by Decree-Law n. 83/2015 refer to the bankruptcy proceedings and in particular the questions mentioned below:

·      Interim financing: article 1 of the Decree grants the debtor which is preparing to undertake a composition proceedings or debt restructuring, the possibility of asking the court to contract on an urgent funding to ensure the operation of the business. On this instance the judicial authority takes a decision within 10 days heard without any formality the creditors;

·      Sale of company during composition procedures: article 2 of the decree provides that the appointed judicial commissioner that provides for the sale of the company or individual assets is required to assess whether the offer of the potential buyer matches the best interests of creditors; otherwise, the commissioner may ask the Court to open a competitive process through which receive expressions of interest by the debtor or of third parties in order to avoid an excessive depreciation of company assets.

·      Application to the composition procedures submitted by creditors: article 3 of the decree provides that if the agreed plan presented by the debtor does not ensure payment of at least 40% of the unsecured creditors, 10% of the creditors may present a different plan which, together with the first, is discussed in the meeting of creditors.

·      Pending contracts: regarding the pending contacts at the time of application for composition procedure, the article 8 of the legislative news provides that the debtor may apply to the Court in order to obtain an authorization to dissolve the contracts in execution or a stay of execution for not more than 60 days. The effects of such suspension or termination start to run when the decision giving authorization issued by the Judge is communicated to the supplier. The same provision of law said a particular discipline for financial leasing contracts providing that the grantor has the right to return the goods but at the same time it have to pay to the composition proceedings the possible differences between the more money raised from the sale or relocation of the same good. In addition, the grantor has a chance to insinuate in composition proceedings a debt equal to the difference between the amount due on the date of the filing of the bankruptcy proceedings and the proceeds from the new allocation.

So there are the most important news of the Decree Law of June 27^th, we must wait until the conversion law and especially the practical applicability of the same to understand if the goal set by the government can be considered achieved.