Gläubigereinfluss durch Covenants

Wolfgang Servatius examines the legal impact of a company's creditors who are increasingly becoming part of good corporate governance in Germany. Their decisions on how management should behave and the contractual protection in covenants of loan agreements may be seen as a market-oriented chance to avoid a company's insolvency. In respect to this outside influence of creditors on companies, the author favors a liberal approach as long as a corresponding responsibility can be developed. The basis for such lender control liability can be seen in an extensive application of the German legal rules on the recharacterization of loans as equity.