Insolvency and Liquidation Support

Not necessarily, but be realistic about where an operational creditor sits. Two things decide the outcome. The first is whether you file a properly proved claim inside the window, because a creditor who does not is not in the distribution at all. The second is where your claim sits in the waterfall, and unsecured operational creditors sit below insolvency costs, workmen and secured financial creditors. The honest position is that recovery for operational creditors in Indian insolvency is often a fraction of the claim. That is a reason to file properly and cheaply, and a reason to look hard at whether there is a guarantor or security you have forgotten about, because those may be worth considerably more than the claim in the process.

Possibly, and act now rather than after the plan is approved. A claim filed after the window closes may still be considered at the discretion of the resolution professional, and there is a body of case law on late claims that turns heavily on how late, why, and what stage the process has reached. What is very difficult is a claim brought after a resolution plan has been approved, because approved plans bind creditors including those who did not file, and the whole design of the process is that the successful applicant takes the company on a settled set of liabilities. So the answer depends almost entirely on how far along the process is, and it is worth finding out today rather than next month.

It is an asset in a liquidation estate that could not be sold through the ordinary routes: a contingent or disputed receivable, a refund due from a government department, litigation that has not concluded, or a claim arising from a preferential or fraudulent transaction that has to be pursued before it is worth anything. A liquidator has limited time and money and cannot chase these, so the framework allows them to be assigned to somebody who can, either outright or with a share of any recovery above the price. The buyer is paying a discount for time, cost and the risk of losing. The reason this matters to a creditor is that these assets are frequently written to nil, and value that is written to nil in a liquidation is value that leaves the estate.

The parts that are labour and evidence rather than judgment. Reconstructing a receivables ledger from incomplete records, tracing debtors who have moved or dissolved, assembling the documentary position on each account so a demand can be made on something. Verifying claims received against the corporate debtor's own books, which is slow work and is where discrepancies actually surface. Reviewing the look back period for preferential, undervalued, extortionate and fraudulent transactions and preparing the material behind an application. And preparing the ground for realising assets that are not readily realisable. What remains yours is every statutory function and every decision the framework reserves to you, and we do not describe our work as anything other than support to it.

Yes, but it is a separate engagement and it should be agreed as one rather than assumed to be inside a claims mandate. Most of what we do here needs no appearance at all: proving a claim, answering the resolution professional's queries and getting a classification corrected are documentary exercises. Where an application to the tribunal genuinely is needed, we will tell you what it is likely to involve and agree the engagement for it separately, and where the right answer is counsel with a particular tribunal practice we will say that instead. Clause 4.7 of our Terms of Engagement sets out the boundary. It is drawn this way because the preparation and the appearance are different pieces of work with different costs, and rolling them into one fee hides that from you.