Hyperion bankrupt?

[vidarh]

ACTUALLY, as a former business manager, contractor, and business owner your are VERY wrong.
This is NOT, as you put it "a very serious matter".
Its an attempt to collect a debt.

And one that would backfire in my own country where I would petition the court for chapter 11 protection.

I agree. I've personally been on the receiving end of this, and "beat it". \

In our case it was a conflict over the validity of a debt, and we got "ambushed" with a bankruptcy hearing at a time we weren't available, even though we were clearly solvent. This happens all the time, and courts definitively are not happy when they realise. All kinds of other mistakes happens too (e.g. cases where the creditor has genuine reason to believe the company is insolvent, or even where the company itself believes it may be insolvent).

A lot of companies survive bankruptcy claims with only minor hassle. Of course, for that to matter in this case Hyperion must be solvent, or able to become solvent with the assistance of the administrator, and I have no idea if that's the case.

[vidarh]

@Iggy
That would be true if bankruptcy proceedings were only just beginning.

That the initial proceedings are over just means that the court did not see evidence that gave them reason to throw out the initial claim, and so had reason to appoint an administrator to protect the interests of the creditors.

That's neither a big deal, nor scary if the company is actually solvent, as in that case the finding of a bankruptcy is generally invalid and can be easily overturned.

It's not at all unusual for bankruptcy courts (in general; I don't know specifics of Belgian courts) to be lenient about notification, on the assumption that an operating business will e.g. regularly process it's mail, and that the consequences of being overzealous can usually be easily rectified before it causes damage (while the converse is often not true - people can and do take the money and run). For small companies it's not that unusual for it to result in unpleasant surprises - been there, survived that (by demonstrating we had the money, and settling with a creditor we had a conflict with).

Of course, if Hyperion is insolvent, then it *is* a big deal.

[vidarh]

Being taken to court in a forced bankruptcy is significant if actually leads to a hearing.  Being taken to court by a third party (which has standing to do so) and having the court agree that the company is insolvent and assign a curator is devastating.  

All that is required to have standing to begin bankruptcy proceedings generally is for the company to have an outstanding, unsettled debt to you. E.g. paying an invoice too late and not heeding whatever statutory required warnings to pay.

In many countries, getting a hearing requires no more than paying a tiny fee and filling out a form.

Getting a finding of bankruptcy requires pretty much no evidence if the other party for whatever reason doesn't show up - which is not *that* unusual in the case of small companies - the scenario Hyperion has described where their registered seat/office is with a management company that has failed to pass on a document is definitively plausible (though that doesn't mean it can't also be a made up excuse).

No matter how much people here want this to be very serious, it is only serious if Hyperion actually is insolvent (and it's certainly possible they are, but as of now we don't know) and/or doesn't handle it properly.

[vidarh]

I thought Ben said it was a third party (vs a creditor)?  Just who is this third party that has standing with the courts to force Hyperion into bankruptcy?  

What reason do you have to think a "third party" does not refer to a creditor? I read "third party" to mean "someone not the government *or* Hyperion". A reason for not referring to them as a creditor may be that Hyperion believes their claim to be invalid. But to the court they will be a creditor if they claim to be one and Hyperion isn't there to dispute it.

It if was just a creditor looking for their money, perhaps if it was insignificant if the debt was settled prior to the hearing. But this, in Ben's words, is a third party and they had the courts agree with them.

The courts agreed with the "third party" because Hyperion by their own admission was not represented at the hearing. According to Hyperion this was because the summons was not forwarded to them in time. Whether that is true or not remains to be seen, of course.

If a party does not show up, it is normal in most jurisdictions for many types of cases (including bankruptcy hearings) for the judge to treat the opposing party's evidence as true, and enter judgement accordingly, because the risk of a miscarriage of justice is small (if the company later is found to be solvent, the finding can trivially be reversed and the bankruptcy case closed; if on the other hand the judge does not grant a bankruptcy and it turns out the principals didn't show because they were busy hiding assets, the creditors may lose out big time).
 
Have you actually *dealt* with being on the receiving end of this? I have. As I've said before, it's no big deal *if* they're actually solvent and the story is as they've described it.

[vidarh]

they already didnt handle it properly since they let it happen to be declared bankrupt. not getting papers handed over on time..

You can't handle something properly if you don't know about it in the first place.

mygod.. how much absent minded they must be.

If it is the way they described it, then their registered office is a management company or law firm responsible for handling their administrative affairs. That's not at all an unusual arrangement for smaller companies (I've done that with several companies for various reasons). If so, it is not Hyperions fault if that company failed to carry out their job.

It could very well be it was Hyperion that messed up, but we don't have any evidence of that yet.

 and the particular notion to hide this state of affairs from the community of people who depend on them, at least for the time being, since it would come out one day or another, indicates it is some sort of playing for time.

A bankruptcy claim is not something you generally go around shouting from the rooftops, exactly because of the type of reactions we see here.

[vidarh]

now, one can get hit by a car, fly over it, land behind on his back, stand up and start the quarrel with its driver. it happened to me twenty years ago. this dosnt mean, it is likely. look, a secretary that doesnt immediately froward the most significant writing, one that contains the company to be or not to be clause, to his boss must be either nuts or ill willed. a boss that hires such an employee must be at least very naive, sorry. it is really telling about the degraded state of affairs.

I get that it seems odd, but clearly you don't have experience with this, or you would have known that it is a relatively frequent occurrence.  There are many reasons for using a company handling agent of some form, but ensuring prompt and speedy mail delivery is not one of them, and it would not at all be unusual for whomever signed for the summons to not know that it was particularly urgent. Furthermore, assuming what Hermans has said is true, that person would not be a Hyperion employee, but an employee of a company that normally handle their administrative matters (this is also a relatively common arrangement).

Failure to appear because of late delivery of papers happens fairly regularly in bankruptcy cases, because timelines on purpose are often short because it is cheaper to rectify after the fact.

If Hermans' claims are true, it at most tells you something about the "degraded state of affairs" of the company handling their administrative matters.

You may very well have legitimate issues to be unhappy with Hyperion, but absent actual facts, this is not a reason. Not yet, anyway. We'll see soon enough.

and especially seeing the issue is serious, one of they first steps towards the community, if they care for them and their loyalty at all, would be to issue official explanation note on the subject, rather than let their followers repeat out of context what they posted or said somewhere in the hidden.

Their first responsibility is *to the business*. If you're subject to what you believe to be a wrongful bankruptcy declaration, the last thing you should be doing is *actually* damaging the company by drawing peoples attention to it unnecessarily, or you may very easily find yourself bankrupt through your own stupidity even if the original claim is closed.

[vidarh]

No, it was declared insolvent on Jan 26th.  Today (Feb 26th) is the deadline for creditors (that would be including Devs that were never paid for their OS4 work) to file with Bert with their statement on what Hyperion owes them.  March 4th is when Bert compiles everything and presents a report on what to do with Hyperion (including liquidation option).  If a Dev does not file in a few hours, Hyperion is then free from ever having to pay that Dev for their work.

I don't know Belgian law, but it doesn't work like that any place I know about and it'd be very odd (though possible) for Belgium to deviate substantially from most European countries in this respect.

A creditor that does not file a claim with the administrator will have severely reduced chance of getting a piece of the pie *if* Hyperion is liquidated, but only because in the case of liquidation the assets are irreversibly (for the most part) sold of or distributed to creditors, and the company (and hence the debt) ceases to exist at the end of the process. A claim does not just evaporate into thin air because a time limit set by the bankruptcy court passes (though depending on jurisdiction the difficulty in getting a claim recognised subsequently may vary)

If the company is not liquidated, claims are generally not affected at all any more than other contracts would be - the company would in that case generally go back to operating as if nothing had happened.

Now Ben has filed an appeal against the original (default) ruling.  However if the courts grant Ben another hearing, all Bert's work is going to be momentum working against Hyperion especially after the financial audit and all the debt that I doubt was ever included in Hyperion's book such as debt owed to Devs.  It's going to take a miracle.

What you are suggesting is that you doubt that Hyperion has followed the law. If you are right, and there are debts owed to Devs or others that is valid, and that does not appear on Hyperions books, they've carried out accounting fraud to an extent that would be a criminal offence in most countries.

Just to make clear what we are talking about. If a lot of unknown debt surfaces, then that's far, far more serious than a bankruptcy claim - a bankruptcy only very rarely gives rise to criminal liabilities for the principals of the business (they main way that would happen would be if the principals of the business have known for some time that the business was insolvent without starting insolvency proceedings).

Unless you have something more concrete than unspecified "doubts" about their bookkeeping, that is speculation of a level best left until after we see what actually happens.