In a bid to fortify the bedrock of entrepreneurship in the UAE, a new bankruptcy law poised to take effect on May 1, 2024, promises to usher in an era of resilient business restructuring, fostering a more secure and dynamic economic environment.
Federal Decree-Law No. 51/2023 heralds a significant overhaul to the UAE’s bankruptcy framework, marking the genesis of a specialized Bankruptcy Court, an innovative preventive settlement procedure, and heightened accountability for managerial echelons.
This legislative facelift, while superseding its 2016 predecessor, maintains continuity by preserving extant regulations and resolutions until their replacement by the new legal fabric.
Sunil Ambalavelil, a luminary partner at Dubai’s NYK Law Firm, elucidated the revamped law’s trifecta of processes: preventive settlement, restructuring, and bankruptcy/liquidation. Noteworthy among the enhancements is the introduction of a dedicated bankruptcy court and an augmented burden of responsibility for management.
“The preventive settlement procedure, a beacon of the new law, streamlines lighter-touch restructurings sans stringent timelines, fostering expeditious resolutions,” Ambalavelil remarked.
Under this procedure’s aegis, exclusive authority vests in debtors to initiate proceedings, retaining operational reins over their commercial undertakings throughout.
Conversely, the restructuring process, tailored for intricate overhauls, boasts a more lenient temporal threshold. Applicants enjoy a grace period of 60 days post the cessation of payment, without facing automatic rejection for tardiness.
Legal pundits assert that the proposed restructuring blueprint may encompass the sale of a debtor’s entire business as a going concern.
Crucially, the new legislation broadens the ambit of liability, ensnaring not just board members and managers but also those actively steering the company’s operations and liquidation affairs. This expanded culpability extends retroactively two years prior to the company’s insolvency declaration, with offenders potentially required to ameliorate the company’s debts.
With the imprimatur of the bankruptcy court, decisions and judgments assume the mantle of enforceable writs, bolstering the legal infrastructure’s efficacy. Moreover, bankruptcy courts are empowered to issue interim orders and stay pending claims against debtors, a prerogative absent in antecedent legislation.
Reflecting on the pre-2016 legal landscape, legal scholars bemoaned punitive measures that criminalized business failure, precipitating a mass exodus of indebted entrepreneurs. “The erstwhile legal arsenal, while adequate for smaller enterprises, offered scant respite beyond liquidation, precipitating deleterious outcomes for stakeholders and the economy at large,” they reflected.
In essence, the new bankruptcy law emerges as a linchpin of legislative ingenuity, poised to recalibrate the UAE’s business terrain, fostering resilience, and innovation while mitigating the specter of insolvency-induced upheavals.
