With regard to Mexico City, the most notorious commercial bankruptcies have been those of Altán Redes and Interjet, which are in the verification visit phase, which aims to provide the judge with information so that can determine if said companies are insolvent, in terms of the Bankruptcy Law.
It is striking that, although these two companies are at the same stage of the procedure, they both present a different picture.
In Altán Redes, the Judiciary acted relatively quickly: in a couple of weeks, their bankruptcy application was accepted for processing and IFECOM appointed a visitor to carry out the verification visit and draw up an opinion determining whether Altán Redes must be declared in bankruptcy.
In Interjet, a creditor demanded the declaration of commercial bankruptcy of the airline, even asking that it be put in a legal state of bankruptcy and therefore proceed to the liquidation of its assets. The lawsuit was admitted in April 2021.
The Interjet competition has run into several obstacles to the processing of the procedure. To begin with, it was until June that the company could be summoned. To date, it has been impossible to carry out the verification visit to review the insolvency situation of Interjet, due to the strike that the airline workers union started since January 8, 2021, a circumstance that has prevented the visitor and his staff enter the facilities.
It should be noted that Interjet said it agreed to enter bankruptcy, but opposed the declaration of bankruptcy, and instead requested that the conciliation stage begin with the intention of finding a way to save the company; on the other hand, he requested not to carry out the visit and to go directly to the commercial bankruptcy judgment. Apparently this issue will take time to move forward and be resolved.
The difference in progress in the commercial bankruptcy of these companies can be attributed, at least in part, to the absence of specialized courts in commercial matters. Indeed, when a contest gets complicated, becomes extremely litigious and there are novel or “creative” issues raised by the lawyers of the different parties, the process seems to enter a zone of confusion and congestion, and suddenly, the contests they get bogged down and last for years and years.
We have already seen — and it has been widely reported — that several Mexican companies have chosen to go to the United States to process their commercial bankruptcy, despite the fact that processing a bankruptcy there is much more expensive than doing it in Mexico.