Accounting for debt restructuring in the current crisis.The italian experience

The ongoing crisis in the international markets has generated considerable worsening economic, financial and capital conditions of Italian companies, with inevitable consequences on their solvency degree. This has resulted in the progressive use of certain legal institutions introduced by Bankruptcy Reform, the main: recovery and resolution planning ,restructuring agreement, pre-insolvency agreements with creditors. The main tools for solving the crisis require the adoption of appropriate procedures aiming at the fair presentation in the financial statements. For this reasons the Organismo Italiano di Contabilità (OIC) in July 2011 issued a new document which is no. 6 of the "Accounting Principles”. The purpose of this standard is to prescribe the accounting treatment and disclosures, to be provided in the Notes on the effects produced by a debt restructuring, specifically regulating even the new legal institutions introduced by the Bankruptcy Reform. The focus of the research is to highlight how the underlying philosophy of the OIC n. 6 has been to emphasize the public interest in preserving the firm as an economic value to the community .