From 1 January 2007, the provisions of the Commercial Code mostly dealing with company reorganisations and bankruptcy have been tidied up. The key changes include:
- requiring businesses to publish identification data on their website, if they have one. Identification data includes details such as the business’ name, legal form, administrative centre, identification number and Commercial Register entry.
- requiring businesses to publish information about their status on their website, such as whether they are in liquidation, bankruptcy or reorganisation. This is partly driven by EU legislation to protect consumers.
- clarifying the payment period for settlement shares – now determined the period when paying the settlement share is conditioned by the adoption of regular individual financial statements for the accounting period preceding the accounting period in which the share of shareholder in the company expired
- allowing several persons to be entered in the Commercial Register as co-owners of share
- allowing a company’s share capital and the shareholder's deposit in a limited liability company to be expressed in Euros
- allowing joint stock companies to be established by subscription call as long as at least the minimum statutory amount of company share capital is subscribed for
- requiring the entire share capital of any corporation with tradable shares to be paid up within the period set by shareholders in general meeting whenever its share capital is increased by monetary contributions, not only when the joint stock company is registered at the stock exchange, but always, when the shares of the company are tradable at the stock exchange
- allowing quoted shares in a company to be traded when the share capital is being increased as long as their face value is paid up before the transaction is registered in the Commercial Register
- making a number of changes in the regulation of cooperatives:
- differentiating member shares from member investments, by defining a member share as including tangible rights and obligations as well as the investment itself
- allowing cooperative share capital to be denominated in Euros
- allowing individuals and corporate entities to pay different amounts of member contributions or entry contribution
- allowing cooperatives to introduce a rule in their by-laws allowing payment of settlement shares by means other than cash
- allowing the statutory period of notice required to terminate contracts between business representatives and consumers to be extended by mutual agreement.
Law: Act No. 7/2005 Coll. on bankruptcy and reorganization; EC Directives 2003/58/EC amending l68/151/EEC; Act No. 42/1992 Coll. on transformation of cooperatives
