The report examines the central problems of cross-border insolvency: determining the debtor’s centre of main interests (COMI), selecting the appropriate forum, recognising foreign proceedings and managing the interaction between insolvency, corporate disputes, criminal seizures and other legal restrictions. The underlying difficulty is that an economically integrated business may operate across several jurisdictions, while judicial authority and the powers of officeholders remain territorially limited. Opening insolvency proceedings in one country therefore does not create universal control over assets and participants elsewhere.

A central distinction in the report is between four separate outcomes: recognition of the foreign proceeding and its representative, the grant of specific judicial assistance, recognition of a judgment against a separate defendant, and the actual recovery and distribution of property. Success at one stage does not automatically establish entitlement at the next. This distinction is particularly important in relation to real estate, avoidance claims, access to banking or other records, assets subject to criminal seizure and disputes involving corporate structures.

The report gives particular attention to COMI and forum selection. A registered office, the residence of a director or the existence of a bank account is not a substitute for analysing where the debtor’s affairs are actually administered and how that administration is objectively visible to creditors and other third parties. Where a jurisdictional shift has occurred, the analysis must consider whether management functions genuinely moved, whether creditors could understand the change and what contemporaneous evidence supports it. The fact that a restructuring regime is more favourable does not, by itself, establish abusive forum shopping.

The comparative analysis covers the European insolvency framework, the UNCITRAL Model Law, Chapter 15 of the United States Bankruptcy Code, England and Wales after Brexit, and French recognition and exequatur mechanisms. It also examines secondary proceedings, protection of local creditors, corporate groups, applicable law, pending litigation and arbitration, access to documents and measures designed to prevent multiple recovery on the same claim across different proceedings.

ARGA’s practical conclusion is that an international insolvency strategy should begin with a map of debtors, assets, ownership, encumbrances and operative judicial restrictions rather than with the selection of the most familiar cross-border procedure. Preservation, disclosure, administration, sale and distribution each require their own legal basis and should be assessed in terms of enforceability and net economic value. The effectiveness of a cross-border case should ultimately be measured not by the number of recognition orders obtained, but by the value actually preserved and lawfully distributed to creditors.