On May 29, 2020, the “Bill to Lift Pledge Bans” was submitted to the House of Representatives. What does the proposal entail and what is the rationale behind it? In this contribution, we update you.
Corporate financeability
Based on freedom of contract, parties can agree with each other on the assignability or pledgeability of claims. For example, assignment or pledging of claims can be excluded or prohibited. Large companies often have this standard in their general terms and conditions because they do not want to be confronted with a creditor other than their original creditor and because they need an unambiguous payment address.
To illustrate, a lumber dealer sells a lot of lumber to a contractor. The lumber dealer gets a money claim against the contractor. After all, the contractor must pay for his purchase. If the contract between the lumber dealer and the contractor (or the general conditions) contains a pledge prohibition in favor of the contractor, the lumber dealer’s claim against the contractor is not pledgeable. Thus, the contractor cannot suddenly face a lienholder as a new creditor.
The use of pledge prohibitions, not only affects contracting parties, but also affects the willingness of financiers to extend credit to companies. This is because a lender wants security for the repayment of the credit it has extended. That security is often obtained by placing a lien on the borrower’s accounts receivable portfolio. If it turns out afterwards that the pledging of (part of) this debtor’s portfolio is contractually excluded, the financier has less cover for his loan than he assumed. This reduces the willingness of financiers to finance companies on that basis.
Lobby
Led by several lobbying organizations, including the Dutch Banking Association and the Factoring & Asset Based Financing Association Netherlands, the legislature decided to tackle the practice mentioned above. This has resulted in the Bill to Lift Pledge Bans. The purpose of the bill is to use a ban on pledging prohibitions (i.e., a ban on a prohibition) to ensure that more money receivables can be used as cover for lending. An additional reason for the legislator to want to address the use of pledge bans is that countries such as Germany, France and Austria already have similar pledge bans in place. As long as the Netherlands does not follow suit, there is effectively a distortion of the level-playing-field to the detriment of Dutch businesses. The lobby organizations estimate that the adjustment could lead to an additional credit space of almost 1 billion euros.
Article 3:83 BW
The intention is to insert the prohibition of pledging in article 3:83 BW. A new paragraph 3 will provide that the exclusion of the transferability or pledgeability of a registered money claim arising from the exercise of a profession or business is no longer possible. In practice, this therefore concerns “money claims in rem between companies that have arisen in the ordinary course of business” (as follows from the explanatory note to the bill). If such a clause is concluded, it is null and void.
Trustees
One point of criticism of the bill comes from the corner of trustees. They anticipate that the lifting of the prohibition of pledging will result in more empty estates. Whereas as a result of prohibitions on pledging (non-pledged) debtor claims still sometimes flow into the bankruptcy estate, this will no longer be the case if the bill is approved. The consequence is not only that a bankruptcy situation will often be even more disadvantageous for the other creditors, but also that in many cases insufficient funds will be available for payment of the trustee’s salary. The thrust of a pledge prohibition, however, is not to provide the estate with funds to pay trustee salaries, so this criticism cannot be separated from the larger (and long-standing) discussion of the empty estate issue.
In conclusion
The intent of the bill is clear. The aim of the pledge ban is to increase the financeability of businesses. However, before the bill is approved, some time will pass. For now, the ball is in the House of Representatives’ court.
This contribution was written by Mr. Gerben Plomp , a member of the Corporate and Labor Law practice groups.