German insolvency laws are considered unsympathetic to companies going bust, with the result that insolvency proceedings are often kicked off in the UK, as Annerose Tashiro reports
When UK Conservative Party leader David Cameron stood in front of the Confederation of British Industry on 15 July and proclaimed that “we cannot – and should not – save all companies that fail” as a result of the credit crisis, he promised to investigate replicating the better parts of the US Chapter 11 system of liquidation. While this is a laudable suggestion, the process of administration in the UK is already less painful than virtually anywhere else in Europe. The credit crisis has hit whole economies – and hit them hard. The problem is further compounded in manufacturing industries, where rising energy prices are especially troublesome. Collectively, this spells a time of extreme worry for the German economy in particular.
