ABENGOA MÉXICO: A TALE OF TWO PLANS.

ABENGOA MÉXICO: A TALE OF TWO PLANS.

 This tale commenced in June 2016, when a bank filed an involuntary petition in bankruptcy against Abengoa Mexico, S.A. de C.V., a publicly held company incorporated under Mexican laws. In December 2016, the adjudication in bankruptcy was issued, and the reorganization stage opened. In Mexico, a case will be closed if a reorganization plan is submitted and approved within a fixed period; if not, the case will be converted to the liquidation stage. Only allowed creditors can sign the plan, but to get a claim allowed, one must pass through the allowance of claims proceeding, which is often heavily contested multiparty litigation.

In effect, in the allowance of claims proceeding, there could be at least three resolutions, the first instance, the appeal resolution, and the amparo (which is an extraordinary judicial recourse). In this tale, the first instance rule on the allowance of claims was issued in April 2017 and the appeal resolution in June 2020, that is, more than three years (and still we must wait for the third resolution – amparo). Within those three years, two plans were submitted to approval, and, to this day, the two plans are coexisting with one another. How did this happen?

Well, the approval of plans is also a heavily contested proceeding, with the possibility of at least four resolutions. In this tale, based on the creditors allowed in the first instance rule (April 2017), the first plan was approved in January 2018, the appeal resolution was issued in November 2018,  and then it was amended in October 2019, according to an amparo resolution. This amended appeal resolution that confirmed the first plan was also challenged through an amparo, which is still pending at this time.

Provided that the circumstances changed, Abengoa submitted a second plan for approval. The second plan was approved in June 2020, despite the fact that neither the first plan approval resolution nor the allowance of claims was conclusive yet. Needless to say, the approval of the second plan is also subject to challenge, so the tale is yet to be finished.

For clarity purposes, below is a timeline of this tale. 



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