The New ‘Alert Procedure’ in Italy: Regarder au-delà du modèle français?

Italy is about to enforce the first, comprehensive reform of its corporate insolvency framework since the Second World War. The new Codice della Crisi d’Impresa e dell’Insolvenza builds on international recommendations, European laws and foreign best practices. One area that has been subject to substantial influence from foreign models is preventive insolvency mechanisms, where the Italian Legislator drew from the French and English experience, as these countries have a widely recognised reputation of excellence in this field. Nevertheless, the similarities between the Italian and the English system – particularly with reference to the Italian panel of experts in alert procedures and the English ‘pre-pack pool’ in pre-packaged administrations – have so far been overlooked in the academic literature. This paper sheds some light on the degree of cross-fertilisation between the Italian panel of experts in procedure d’allerta and the English pre-pack pool in pre-packaged administration. The primary purpose of this study is to investigate if regulatory reforms are needed to support the activity of the Italian panel in promoting restructuring deals for debtors in distress.