Legal Barriers to the Application of the Doctrine of Substantive Consolidation in Bankruptcy Cases

The paper examines the relationship between the principles of property isolation of a legal entity and limited liability with the institution of material consolidation in cases of bankruptcy of corporate groups. The purpose of the paper is to formulate grounds for derogation from the basic principles of corporate law in the bankruptcy of a group of companies, based on the arguments of opponents of the application of the doctrine of material consolidation. The paper concludes that for the Russian legal system, the application of the material consolidation regime is permissible only in exceptional cases. Such include cases when there is an obvious abuse of rights on the part of the debtor, controlling persons and affiliated creditors as well as free movement of assets within the business group, the transit nature of the movement of funds through the accounts of persons included in the corporate group, the complexity of intra-group relations resulting in that it is almost impossible to understand which legal entity owns the assets.

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