After the cancellation of the moratorium on bankruptcy this year, the number of relevant lawsuits was five times less than in 2021, when a similar moratorium was lifted.
Managing Partner of RI-Consulting Elena Gladysheva reports on what may be the reason for such a significant difference between the results of the two moratoriums? To what extent does this growth correspond to expectations - is it higher or lower than expected? Will it still grow? Has the moratorium generally had a positive impact on the market, especially given these data?
"In fact, the first bankruptcy moratorium introduced in 2020 ended in early January 2021, which means that in the first 10 days (from January 11 to 20, 2021) after the end of the first moratorium, 1,684 bankruptcy cases were filed.
At the same time, in the first 10 days after the end of the second moratorium (from September 2 to 11, 2022) 307 cases were opened, which is significantly less than after the first moratorium. This can be explained by the following:
After the end of the second moratorium, the debtors are mainly legal entities, and less than twenty cases are initiated against individuals. This is explained by the fact that out-of-court bankruptcy of citizens is gaining popularity in the RF.
Thus, on October 7, 2022, Fedresource published statistics on out-of-court citizen bankruptcy, according to which, from January through September 2022, multifunctional centers (MFCs) published 4,710 reports of initiating out-of-court citizen bankruptcy proceedings, an increase of 42.3% over the same period in 2021. The percentage of cases initiated to the number of filings increased to 59% from 49% in the same periods.
While referring to the cases initiated from September 2-11, 2020 (86 cases), it is worth mentioning that they were initiated during the period of the moratorium, i.e., as a rule the applications were filed by the debtors themselves, not by the creditors. It explains the smaller number of cases as compared to the current situation (after the second moratorium, when almost all cases were initiated upon applications of creditors).
Taking into account that the overwhelming majority of cases after the end of the second moratorium were initiated exactly against legal entities, and only in 10% of cases the amount of debt exceeds 10 million rubles, we can conclude that the overwhelming majority of bankrupt companies are intermediaries, whose profit depended on the difference in price between the purchase and retail sale of a small amount of goods / works / services.
At the same time, it should be taken into account that the introduction of ‘parallel imports’ in the Russian Federation resulted in a change in the routes and methods of goods delivery from abroad, which also affected the cost of these goods and their quantity on the market. These circumstances, among other things, influenced the profits of small and medium retailers," the advocate commented.
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