The first class of credits in the concursal procedure of judicialreorganization in Chile: the great absent?

Abstract

The new Chilean bankruptcy law, No. 20,720 (D.O. of January 9, 2014), omitsexpressly referring to the credits of the first class in the judicial reorganizationprocedure of the debtor company. This omission has been understoodby a sector of the doctrine and even by the Superintendence of Insolvencyand Re-entrepreneurship as synonymous with the exclusion of said credits,which therefore would not be “reorganizable”.

This work aims to raise and justify the opposite conclusion, with a view to overcomingone of the main obstacles that is currently facing this procedure, in its sphereof practical implementation and in view of its economic viability for the proponentdebtor.

The research methods used are those of the social sciences, in particular, the historical,dogmatic and comparative methods.

The first one is relevant for the review of the different modalities and nuances withwhich this subject has been approached and implemented in the Chilean BankruptcyLaw. The second one is aimed at the search, systematization and analysis of nationaland foreign bibliographic material on the subject, with a view to building a criticalvision of national legislation on reorganization, classes and categories of creditors.In the third, the Chilean system is confronted with foreign legal systems that dealwith this matter, analyzing the differences and similarities that exist between them.