Judge Paulo Furtado de Oliveira Filho, from the 2nd Court of Bankruptcy and Judicial Reorganizations of São Paulo, decreed on Wednesday (23) the end of the judicial reorganization of Grupo Abril, owner of Abril publishing house, which publishes Veja, Capricho and You S/A.
The process began in August 2018, when Abril declared it had accumulated R$1.6 billion in debt. According to the closing sentence, by September of last year, 100% of the credits in dollars and 99.4% of the amounts in reais had already been paid.
Not all incidents –independent and parallel proceedings linked to the main action– of Abril’s judicial reorganization are closed, but, according to the decision, they will not be affected by the closure, since all payments had to be included in the accepted reorganization plan. by the Justice of São Paulo in September 2019.
“The end of the judicial reorganization is not conditioned to the judgment of the qualifications or judicial challenges or to the consolidation of the general picture of creditors”, wrote Oliveira Filho in the sentence.
If any obligation of the recovery plan is breached, creditors may file for bankruptcy of the group in court or debt enforcement. With the closure, however, creditors who have not qualified will no longer be able to enter the debt renegotiation plan.
In Wednesday’s ruling, Oliveira Filho appealed to the judges responsible for other actions against the group, so that the sentences consider the debts consolidated until the start date of the judicial reorganization, August 15, 2018.
“Creditors subject to recovery, but with illiquid claims [decorrentes de responsabilidade civil ou relação trabalhista]they will not be able to demand the amount they want”, wrote the judge, for whom there is a need for the beginning of the recovery to be the parameter.
He states, in the sentence, that “the multiplicity of disputes in the different courts” causes “not only the delay in the satisfaction of creditors and the risk of the debtor being forced to pay more than she owes.”
Oliveira Filho’s request refers to the judgment of the STJ (Superior Court of Justice) which defined, in a repetitive appeal, that the inclusion or not of a credit in the judicial reorganization depends on the date of the triggering event, and not on the closing of the action (the res judicata) that recognized it.
Abril’s judicial recovery covered 21 CNPJs. In addition to Abril Comunicações, which publishes the magazines, there are also publishing and parcel distribution companies Dipar and Tex Courier.
The process was in the supervision phase, a period of two years that works as a type of grace period for compliance with the plan approved in the course of the process. The inclusion of this interval is not mandatory and it is up to the judge to decide. As the name implies, the period of supervision is for the Judiciary to make sure that debts are being paid.
In May of last year, the headquarters of Editora Abril on the Tietê waterfront, in São Paulo, was bought by the Fares family, owner of the Marabraz stores, for R$ 118.7 million. The property, from 1968, has an office — the six-story building, with an area of 7,100 m² — and two warehouses, one measuring 3,100 m² and the other measuring 9,200 m².
During the judicial recovery, Abril also sold Exame magazine, which was sold for R$72.3 million by BTG Pactual, which holds, through Enforce (a credit recovery company), most of the bank’s debt group.
In December 2018, the Civita family sold its stake in the group to businessman Fábio Carvalho.
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