On September 14, 2020, Thailand’s Central Bankruptcy Court approved Thai Airways to enter into a court-supervised business rehabilitation (restructuring). The airline’s creditors will now be able to submit formal claims for debts owed, within one month from when the court’s appointment of the plan preparer is published in the Government Gazette. Publication is expected in early October.  

After the COVID-19 outbreak, a number of business operators were forced to react to the situation by reducing the number of workers or staff they employed. For the labour courts and labour officers, one important point related to such reductions is whether employers have paid the correct amount of severance, remuneration in lieu of advance notice, and overtime payments to their employees.

The COVID-19 pandemic has ushered in widespread economic turmoil, with quarantines, business closures, and precipitous declines in consumer and business spending causing momentous shifts in previously sound business models. This has already resulted in various business emergencies, from layoffs and broken supply chains to outright insolvency. This challenging environment seems to signal a bleak outlook for the foreseeable future, but distressed businesses—and their creditors—can take some comfort in knowing that bankruptcy laws around the world are designed for just such circumstances.

Recent amendments to Thailand’s Civil Procedure Code (CPC) will allow parties to submit a matter for court-supervised mediation prior to the actual filing of the case. Encouraging mediation prior to filing a complaint is intended to save time and resources that would otherwise be expended on a trial.These changes are contained in the Act Amending the Civil Procedure Code (No. 32) B.E. 2563 (2020), which was published in the Government Gazette on September 8, 2020, and will apply to all disputes from November 7, 2020, onward.