"Lawyer warns of 'little professionalization' of insolvency administrators for small companies" (with Alexandra Valente)

Alexandra Valente, a lawyer, said this Monday at a Jornal Económico (JE) event that there is still "little professionalization" of insolvency administrators in cases involving smaller companies.

Even so, the SRS Legal partner praises the current legislative panorama on restructuring and insolvency in Portugal and believes that the bank's assistance to the business community has prevented an increase in insolvencies in the country.

However, it is important to bear in mind that this support can act "like a band-aid", according to the lawyer. "Oxygen balloons cannot be a postponement of problems. Reorganization has to be put into practice," she warned, speaking at the JE Advisory breakfast debate, which is taking place at the Intercontinental Lisbon Hotel.

"There were echoes that restructuring and insolvency activity was going to increase exponentially... We haven't seen that in the office. Our economy is resilient," assured Alexandra Valente, in a panel entitled "Challenges of Corporate Restructuring".

Alexandra Valente admits that there have been some movements of this nature in smaller companies, but not in line with initial forecasts, which were based on the end of the pandemic support that was working as a palliative. "It hasn't happened on the scale of 2011-2012," she says.

For the lawyer, the current legislation on this matter is "adequate", after the 2022 changes, when there was a greater stimulus to bank financing in the form of PERs, for example. Law no. 9/2022, of January 11, amended the Insolvency and Company Recovery Code (CIRE).

Alexandra Valente is responsible for the Corporate & Finance department at SRS Legal, which includes the restructuring and insolvency area. Over the course of her more than 20-year career, she has advised on asset finance transactions, structured finance, EMTN (Euro Medium Term Note) programs, the issue of debt securities by banks and companies from other sectors, the registration of investment funds in Portugal and securitization operations.