Business crisis, 63 negotiated settlement procedures activated in the Padua area

Four years after the launch of the negotiated composition of the business crisis, introduced in November 2021, the Chamber of Commerce of Padua, in collaboration with Innexta, is promoting an important conference aimed at taking stock of the progress achieved, reflecting on the local implementation of the tool and discussing operational and legal aspects. The event, free of charge upon registration on the Chamber of Commerce website at this link , is scheduled for Wednesday 25 June starting at 3 pm, at the Conference Room of the Chamber of Commerce headquarters, in Piazza Insurrezione 1/A.

"The negotiated settlement - explains Antonio Santocono, President of the Padua Chamber of Commerce - was born in the context of a complex economic and social phase, marked by the effects of the pandemic and a growing need for more agile and timely tools to address business difficulties. The idea behind the reform is as simple as it is ambitious: intercept the crisis in time, offer companies a space of confidentiality and dialogue with creditors, and accompany, thanks to the figure of the expert, a recovery path that can avoid, where possible, judicial liquidation and the cessation of the company's activity. This approach required a cultural change, even before a regulatory one: overcoming the logic of the crisis as an irreversible event, and instead promoting a new way of addressing it, based on responsibility and collaboration".

Aimed at promoting the recovery of the company in a voluntary and extrajudicial manner, the institute of negotiated composition has already involved approximately 3 thousand companies at a national level and represents a crucial resource in terms of preventing insolvencies. From 2021 to date, 63 compositions have been activated in Padua, 21 in 2024 alone, another 15 filed in the first six months of this year. Based on Unioncamere monitoring data, Veneto is the fourth Italian region for recourse to this measure, with 9% of the requests submitted. Furthermore, according to data collected by the Research Office of the Padua Chamber of Commerce, in 2024 171 new judicial liquidation procedures were opened - a tool that in the new Crisis and Insolvency Code replaces bankruptcy - with a +25% on 2023: a figure that signals a worsening, but which is still better than the variation recorded at a national level.

The conference will open with institutional greetings from the President of the Chamber of Commerce of Padua, Antonio Santocono. This will be followed by speeches by Sandro Pettinato, Deputy Secretary General of Unioncamere, who will offer an analysis of national data and illustrate the evolution of the instrument in the Italian context, and by Andrea Malagugini, Deputy Secretary General of the Chamber of Commerce of Padua, who will instead focus on the local application of the measure, highlighting outcomes, potential and critical issues found in the Padua area. The debate will then delve into the practical aspects, thanks to the speech by the Paduan accountant Enrico Grigolin, who will propose a reflection on the operating methods and the main difficulties encountered by professionals in using the procedure. On the legal level, Judge Giovanni Giuseppe Amenduni will offer a technical analysis of the protective and precautionary measures provided for by the negotiated process. The session will conclude with the presentation of a concrete case of successful settlement.