Insolvency administrators hww wienberg wilhelm and corporate reorganization consultants CMS AG are merging to form the hww Group. The merger will create an entirely new form of service provider in the fields of insolvency and reor-ganization – employing a total of around 360 staff at some 30 locations throughout the Federal Republic of Germany. But it is also a portent of the fun-damental changes now coming in the sector specializing in corporate rescues.
The hww Group is the first service provider to enter the booming market for insolvency administration and corporate reorganization who is qualified to act on both the business and the legal sides. In taking this step, the two companies are moving into position in good time to enable them to react to the coming reform of German insolvency law. Be-cause the revision of the German Insolvency Regulations (InsO) will usher in the process of “near-insolvency reorganization“ at a much earlier point in time and will coordinate this with the ensuing insolvency administration.
“Orders for personal management and disposition of assets will, in particular, increase the need for experienced insolvency consultants who will start their work prior to the ac-tual filing for insolvency“, emphasized Rüdiger Wienberg, one of the partners at hww wienberg wilhelm. “hww and CMS together possess precisely the core qualifications re-quired for this purpose“, added Burkhard Jung, an Executive Director of CMS AG, “namely, financial and business reorganization services, legal advice accompanying the reorganization process and insolvency administration with the emphasis on reorganiza-tion.“
The hww Group, which will be founded on January 1, 2011, will consequently consist of three separate units and will employ a staff of 360 at some 30 locations throughout Germany. Core member of the Group will be hww wienberg wilhelm Insolvenzverwalter, which will concentrate on insolvency administration. The former company CMS AG will be renamed hww CMS Unternehmensberatungs GmbH and offer reorganization and consul-tancy services within the Group to corporations not facing insolvency and those in a near-insolvency situation. The third member of the Group will be hww wienberg wilhelm Rechtsanwälte, a firm specializing in legal advice to companies at risk of insolvency and needing reorganization.
In both reorganization projects and insolvency proceedings, all three of these Group companies will be able to act in the market either independently of each other or in con-cert. “Our clients and also the actual proceedings will benefit in all cases from our exper-tise in all three fields“, claimed Rüdiger Wienberg. CMS Director Stefan Weniger added: “We invariably use the same broad horizon, irrespective of whether we are advising on a complete reorganization project or merely responsible for partial improvements.“
Together with the seamless international network „hww insolvency cooperation partners“ covering now 21 jurisdictions around the globe thehww group is now in an even better position to perform in cross border reorganization and insolvency“, stated Dr. Steffen Koch, one of the partners of hww wienberg wilhelm.
hww wienberg wilhelm is one of the top three of German firms specializing in insolvency administration. The firm’s insolvency administrators have already handled over 9,000 insolvency proceedings, including those of Stella, the musicals impresario, Thielert AG, Stahlwerk Gröditz, the Akson Group, VATAS Holding and various subsidiaries of the Quelle mail order corporation.
CMS AG is one of Germany’s leading corporate reorganization consultants and has been operating in this market for 35 years. Even more important than conventional reorgani-zation consultancy is the former CMS AG’s key business field offering business reorgani-zation advice to insolvent corporations, including detailed consultancy services on merger and acquisition procedures. But these consultants tend to work in the background, leav-ing the insolvency administrator responsible for external representation of these corpora-tions. CMS played a significant role in the rescue of corporations like Woolworth, Adessa and Mäc-Geiz. CMS Executive Directors Burkhard Jung and Stefan Weniger will become partners of hww and at the same time be responsible for management of hww CMS.
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