The masters’ thesis deals with the specificity of the position of a group of companies within insolvency proceedings. Most European legal systems have the traditional concept of individual treatment of a legal person in insolvency law. The problem of a group of companies arises in the insolvency phase due to their specific way of organizing and running their business in the period before the onset of long-term insolvency. With an individual treatment company that is part of a group of companies, an insolvent procedure can lead to an unfair and inefficient solution. In the new regulation on insolvency proceedings, the European Union has addressed this issue in a way of procedural cooperation and coordination in order to reduce costs and increase efficiency. The task is focused on the institute of Substantive Consolidation, which treats a group of companies in the insolvency procedure as a whole because of its high complexity, which makes it impossible to identify the assets and liabilities of a particular company or in cases of fraudulent practices. The institute, which is not widely accepted in the legal systems and also not regulated at the level of legislation, is in most cases the product of the jurisprudence of the courts. The UNCITRAL Recommendations provide us with the framework and options for introducing and using this institute. The following is a summary of the jurisprudence of the United States Courts that has outlined the circumstances of the applicability of this institute. The regulation of individual European countries is also presented, as for example France, the Netherlands, which have already used this institute in case law. In the end of the paper, the advantages and disadvantages of regulating this institute in Slovenian insolvency legislation are presented on the basis of the case of Agrokor and Mercator.
KEY WORDS: Insolvency proceeding, Substantive Consolidation, Group of companies, UNCITRAL, Jurisprudence of the US Courts
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