Advanced Search
MyIDEAS: Login

Financial versus Social Efficiency of Corporate Bankruptcy Law: the French Dilemma?

Contents:

Author Info

  • Régis Blazy

    () (Luxembourg School of Finance, University of Luxembourg)

  • Bertrand Chopard
  • Agnès Fimayer
  • Jean-Daniel Guigou

Abstract

We study the French dilemma associated with court administered resolution of corporate financial distress of firms, in which bankruptcy courts have to combine both social efficiency (maintaining employment) and ex post financial efficiency (determining the best issue for financial distress, proxied here by the global recovery rate). We discuss this dilemma empirically, using a large sample of decisions of French commercial courts concerning the future of bankrupt firms (reorganization, sale as a going concern or liquidation). Addressing this dilemma, we discuss the determinants of bankruptcy courts’ selection between rival offers in sales as a going concern. Finally, we evaluate the financial cost of the French pro debtor system through the recovery rates of various claimants. Our main results are: (1) French commercial courts actively work to protect employment by facilitating continuation and reducing the domino effects of bankruptcy. (2) the courts’ choice between rival buyout offers confirms that social considerations prevail in the arbitration of bankruptcy courts. (3) Continuations through reorganization plans generate the highest recovery rates for all classes of creditors. (4) Contrary to the expected trade-off between social and financial efficiency, courts also enact measures to increase debt recovery once continuation has been chosen. However, for sales, recovery rates are inhibited by asset illiquidity and/or by the courts’ attempt to promote a firm’s continuation through sales at a low price.

Download Info

If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the proper application to view it first. In case of further problems read the IDEAS help page. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS site. Please be patient as the files may be large.
File URL: http://www.lsf.lu/eng/content/download/486/2652/file/07-02.pdf
Our checks indicate that this address may not be valid because: 404 Not Found (http://www.lsf.lu/eng/content/download/486/2652/file/07-02.pdf [302 Moved Temporarily]--> http://www.uni.lu/luxembourg_school_of_finance/eng/content/download/486/2652/file/07-02.pdf [301 Moved Permanently]--> http://wwwfr.uni.lu/luxembourg_school_of_finance/eng/content/download/486/2652/file/07-02.pdf). If this is indeed the case, please notify (Caroline Herfroy)
Download Restriction: no

Bibliographic Info

Paper provided by Luxembourg School of Finance, University of Luxembourg in its series LSF Research Working Paper Series with number 07-02.

as in new window
Length:
Date of creation: 2007
Date of revision:
Handle: RePEc:crf:wpaper:07-02

Contact details of provider:
Postal: 148, avenue de la Faïencerie, L-1511 Luxembourg
Phone: +352 46 66 44 6807
Fax: +352 46 66 44 6811
Email:
Web page: http://www.lsf.lu/eng
More information through EDIRC

Related research

Keywords: Bankruptcy; Reorganization; Liquidation; Recovery rate.;

Other versions of this item:

Find related papers by JEL classification:

This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

References

References listed on IDEAS
Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:
as in new window
  1. Oliver Hart, 2000. "Different Approaches to Bankruptcy," Harvard Institute of Economic Research Working Papers 1903, Harvard - Institute of Economic Research.
  2. Rafael LaPorta & Florencio Lopez de-Silanes & Andrei Shleifer & Robert W. Vishny, 1996. "Law and Finance," Harvard Institute of Economic Research Working Papers 1768, Harvard - Institute of Economic Research.
    • Rafael La Porta & Florencio Lopez-de-Silane & Andrei Shleifer & Robert W. Vishny, 1996. "Law and Finance," NBER Working Papers 5661, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    • La Porta, Rafael & Lopez-de-Silanes, Florencio & Shleifer, Andrei & Vishny, Robert W., 1998. "Law and Finance," Scholarly Articles 3451310, Harvard University Department of Economics.
  3. Franks, Julian R. & Torous, Walter N., 1994. "A comparison of financial recontracting in distressed exchanges and chapter 11 reorganizations," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 35(3), pages 349-370, June.
  4. Philippe Aghion & Oliver Hart & John Moore, 1992. "The Economics of Bankruptcy Reform," CEP Discussion Papers dp0093, Centre for Economic Performance, LSE.
  5. Ariane Lambert-Mogiliansky & Konstantin Sonin & Ekaterina Zhuravskaya, 2007. "Are Russian Commercial Courts Biased? Evidence from a Bankruptcy Law Transplant," Working Papers w0099, Center for Economic and Financial Research (CEFIR).
  6. Per Strömberg, 2000. "Conflicts of Interest and Market Illiquidity in Bankruptcy Auctions: Theory and Tests," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 55(6), pages 2641-2692, December.
  7. Betker, Brian L, 1995. "Management's Incentives, Equity's Bargaining Power, and Deviations from Absolute Priority in Chapter 11 Bankruptcies," The Journal of Business, University of Chicago Press, vol. 68(2), pages 161-83, April.
  8. Robert Gertner & David Scharfstein, 1991. "A Theory of Workouts and the Effects of Reorganization Law," NBER Technical Working Papers 0103, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
  9. Thorburn, Karin S., 2000. "Bankruptcy auctions: costs, debt recovery, and firm survival," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 58(3), pages 337-368, December.
  10. Eberhart, Allan C & Moore, William T & Roenfeldt, Rodney L, 1990. " Security Pricing and Deviations from the Absolute Priority Rule in Bankruptcy Proceedings," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 45(5), pages 1457-69, December.
  11. Francesca Cornelli & Leonardo Felli, 1996. "Ex-ante Efficiency of Bankruptcy Procedures," Finance 9610001, EconWPA.
  12. Edward R. Morrison, 2007. "Bankruptcy Decision Making: An Empirical Study of Continuation Bias in Small-Business Bankruptcies," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 50, pages 381-419.
  13. Franks, Julian R & Torous, Walter N, 1989. " An Empirical Investigation of U.S. Firms in Reorganization," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 44(3), pages 747-69, July.
  14. Weiss, Lawrence A., 1990. "Bankruptcy resolution: Direct costs and violation of priority of claims," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 27(2), pages 285-314, October.
  15. Julian R. Franks & Kjell G. Nyborg & Walter N. Torous, 1996. "A Comparison of UK, US and German Insolvency Codes," Financial Management, Financial Management Association, vol. 25(3), Fall.
  16. Stanley D. Longhofer & Charles T. Carlstrom, 1995. "Absolute priority rule violations in bankruptcy," Economic Review, Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland, issue Q IV, pages 21-30.
  17. Povel, Paul, 1999. "Optimal "Soft" or "Tough" Bankruptcy Procedures," Journal of Law, Economics and Organization, Oxford University Press, vol. 15(3), pages 659-84, October.
  18. Oscar Couwenberg, 2001. "Survival Rates in Bankruptcy Systems: Overlooking the Evidence," European Journal of Law and Economics, Springer, vol. 12(3), pages 253-273, November.
  19. Couwenberg, Oscar, 2001. "Survival rates in bankruptcy systems : overlooking the evidence," Research Report 01E15, University of Groningen, Research Institute SOM (Systems, Organisations and Management).
  20. McFadden, Daniel, 1974. "The measurement of urban travel demand," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 3(4), pages 303-328, November.
  21. Allan C. Eberhart & Lemma W. Senbet, 1993. "Absolute Priority Rule Violations and Risk Incentives for Financially Distressed Firms," Financial Management, Financial Management Association, vol. 22(3), Fall.
  22. Espen Eckbo, B. & Thorburn, S. Karin, 2008. "Automatic bankruptcy auctions and fire-sales," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 89(3), pages 404-422, September.
  23. Dahiya, Sandeep & John, Kose & Puri, Manju & Ramirez, Gabriel, 2003. "Debtor-in-possession financing and bankruptcy resolution: Empirical evidence," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 69(1), pages 259-280, July.
  24. Nico Dewaelheyns & Cynthia Hulle, 2008. "Legal reform and aggregate small and micro business bankruptcy rates: evidence from the 1997 Belgian bankruptcy code," Small Business Economics, Springer, vol. 31(4), pages 409-424, December.
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 in new window

Cited by:
  1. Bertrand Chopard & Eric Langlais, 2009. "Défaut de paiement stratégique et loi sur les défaillances d’entreprises," Cahiers du CEREFIGE 0901, CEREFIGE (Centre Europeen de Recherche en Economie Financiere et Gestion des Entreprises), Universite Nancy 2 - Metz, revised 2009.
  2. Dewaelheyns, Nico & Van Hulle, Cynthia, 2009. "Filtering speed in a continental European reorganization procedure," Open Access publications from Katholieke Universiteit Leuven urn:hdl:123456789/224155, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven.
  3. Ingrid Groessl & Nadine Levratto, 2012. "International Similarities of Bank Lending Practices and Varieties of Insolvency Laws: a Comparative Analysis of France and Germany," Macroeconomics and Finance Series 201203, Hamburg University, Department Wirtschaft und Politik.

Lists

This item is not listed on Wikipedia, on a reading list or among the top items on IDEAS.

Statistics

Access and download statistics

Corrections

When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:crf:wpaper:07-02

For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: (Caroline Herfroy).

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 references are entirely missing, you can add them using this form.

If the full references list an item that is present in RePEc, but the system did not link 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 profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

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