Who was the client?
The Fruit Farm Group (TFFG) operates in the food industry as a Dutch holding company. It is a shareholder of several non-European subsidiaries, which operate various fruit farms in Turkey, South Africa, Brazil and Uruguay.
What was the client’s challenge??
In 2017, fruit farms found themselves in turbulent waters, partly because of weather conditions, the lack of necessary working capital and the Covid-19 crisis. Therefore, the holding TFFG, in turn, faced significant losses.
The board of TFFG, based in Belgium, enlisted the services of Agio Legal, which would oversee TFFG’s restructuring.
However, legal-technical difficulties arose. First of all, TFFG is a company incorporated under Dutch law, so initiating proceedings in Belgium was not straightforward. The Belgian court only has jurisdiction if the centre of the main interests (hereinafter COMI) is located in Belgium. If it concerns a company, the COMI is presumed to coincide with the company’s registered office, i.e. of TFFG in the Netherlands.
In addition, the majority of TFFG’s creditors were bondholders, not all of whom were known.
What solution did we come up with for the client?
Agio Legal made the most of the then recently introduced legislation to successfully implement a judicial reorganisation of TFFG.
For example, Agio Legal succeeded in bringing TFFG’s case before a Belgian court, whereas the obvious jurisdiction was the Dutch court.
Moreover, with many legal hurdles, but also through some clever legal shrewdness, Agio Legal managed to implement a very large debt restructuring for TFFG through a collective agreement, followed by an out-of-court amicable agreement in the execution thereof.
