Arst Avocats designed this mini-series to give you an inside look at a judicial reorganization procedure.
By Morgan Jamet, Partner Attorney — Insolvency Law
Published on August 22, 2026
The phone rings at 8:15 a.m. Marc, without a greeting. "What's going on? I checked the account this morning, there are withdrawals everywhere! We're in receivership, and we're still paying all these people?"
He's tense — not with me, with the situation. I let him talk, then I calmly resume, one station after another.
The chartered accountant, whose role intensifies rather than ends. My own fees, fixed from the outset in a written agreement, with no surprises.
Then the administrator and the receiver speak, and his voice rises a notch. Their compensation is not negotiated: it is fixed by a national scale. But above all, in the first few months, the administrator receives a monthly advance—until reaching the ceiling of their total compensation, after which the payments become less frequent. The receiver follows a slightly different schedule. In both cases, the court approves the amount, based on the work actually performed. What Marc has just seen is one of these advances—an immediate and very real expense, but a settled one, not arbitrary.
"But it's our cash reserves that are going into that, while we're trying to bring in more."
Yes. And it's no surprise to your accounts: this line item is included in the cash flow forecast prepared with your accountant from the very first month. What catches you off guard this morning isn't the amount itself. It's seeing it appear, in reality, on a day when you least expected it. That's not the same thing.
Marc sighs, already less energetic. One last line remains: an auctioneer. The machine he wanted to sell—the judge's authorization has finally arrived, but it's conditional on a prior appraisal. Sometimes you have to spend money to sell, before you can even hope to receive any payment.
"That's a lot of people to pay, for a company that already doesn't have much left."
I put the question to him the other way around: what would it cost to do nothing? A liquidation would also have its costs—on a smaller portfolio, sold in a hurry. These expenses are not the price of failure. They are the price of trying, methodically.
"Spend to get out of this, then." His voice was no longer aggressive. "Yes. And every euro spent now, under control, is better than ten lost later, without any."
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*Marc and the situations described in this series are fictional, composites of cases encountered in practice. Any resemblance to a real situation is purely coincidental.*
Next episode — Season 1, Episode 10/17: " The six-month renewal "
Morgan Jamet,
founding partner of Arst Avocats, advises business leaders on commercial law, insolvency law, restructuring, and business litigation.
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