All talk and no trousers

silence

Debtor

France

Industry

Fashion & Retail

Amount recovered

€13.392,-

Listen to this case
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Situation

Even if your company is doing business with a multinational, dealing with an unpaid invoice is very common. In fact, in our experience, we have seen that multinationals have worse payment behaviour than small businesses. Our French Desk helped a company on one such occasion.

Our client, who is a German provider of clothing and accessories conducted business with a leading French online fashion store. When the client delivered the goods, the French debtor refused to pay. Even after multiple attempts of contacting the debtor, phone calls and demand letters, there was no response. Despite being a well-known retailer in France, the counterparty remained completely silent.

Problem

When our client submitted their case to our lawyers at the French Desk, we immediately consulted the French commercial register. Our lawyers discovered that the French debtor was planning a merge and acquisition operation, that would help the company avoid paying their debts. By splitting the company into two different legal entities, one would keep the old name and registration number while the other would be a new company under a slightly different name. The new entity would receive all the assets while the old one would only keep the debts. Our lawyers at the French Desk discovered this as a planned operation during the Christmas holidays, thinking that their creditors would not notice.

Our approach

Under French law, third parties have a period of 10 days to protest after the publication of the ‘deed of division’. If the party acts too late, nothing can be done. Our lawyers at the French Desk luckily noticed this right on time. We were able to block the operation through a civil court procedure in a French court.

From the minute we announced the civil court procedure, the lawyer of the counterparty immediately contacted us. They offered to pay all the amounts claimed including all the outstanding invoices, collection costs, interests for late payment and legal fees with no delay before the procedure even started! Our German client received everything they were entitled to.

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Our lawyers believe in honesty and transparency. No matter how large a corporation is, good payment behaviour is expected from all.  That’s why we do not allow businesses to take advantage of others. Has your debtor left you in a similar position? This case study is one of the thousands of cases that we can solve on your behalf. If you would like to know more about what we can do for you, contact us today for your free consultation.