The Dutch Scheme and the UK Restructuring Plan are the latest of a series of significant developments in European restructuring law which may provide corporate debtors and their stakeholders with an improved restructuring tool kit to address financial distress and, ultimately, to preserve value by avoiding formal insolvency procedures.

This GT Alert compares the Dutch Scheme with the UK Restructuring Plan. The two have similarities but also significant differences which will be important to consider for stakeholders of debtors that propose European financial restructurings. This is due to the broad application of both procedures in a cross-border restructuring context and the fact that neither the Dutch Scheme nor the UK Restructuring Plan is a purely domestic process confined to use by locally incorporated companies. Both procedures should be available for use by foreign companies provided that they have a ‘sufficient connection’ to the Netherlands or to the UK (as applicable). In some situations, this may mean that a debtor has the option to choose between either of the two procedures to implement its financial restructuring.

Read the full GT Alert, “A New European Restructuring Landscape.”