Case Reference: #2024-MI-0094

Client profile: German textile manufacturer specialising in premium fabrics for the Italian fashion industry. Annual revenue €85M.

Claim: €540,000 — four invoices for fabric deliveries to a Milan-based fashion distributor over a six-month period. The first two invoices were paid promptly. Invoices three and four were acknowledged but unpaid.

The situation

Milan's fashion industry operates on relationships that span generations. Payment culture in the sector is, to use a diplomatic term, relaxed. Extended payment terms of 90–120 days are standard. Delays beyond those terms are common. The distinction between a debtor who is "slow" and a debtor who is "not going to pay" requires local knowledge that no credit report can provide.

The German textile manufacturer had supplied this distributor for three years without incident. The relationship was warm, the orders were growing, and the payments — while never early — arrived within contractual terms. Then invoices three and four, totalling €540,000, entered a silence that the client's credit manager initially attributed to Italian business rhythm and subsequently recognised as something else entirely.

What we found

Our Milan team — led by a former restructuring advisor at one of Italy's leading commercial law firms — conducted a visura camerale (commercial registry search) on the distributor within 24 hours of receiving the mandate. The results were instructive.

Three months before the first unpaid invoice, the distributor had incorporated a new entity — same registered address, same sole director, nearly identical company name with a "2.0" appended. The original entity was still operational but had begun transferring its most valuable client contracts to the new entity. The suppliers, including our client, remained creditors of the original entity. The revenue was migrating to the new one.

This is a pattern so common in Italian commercial practice that it has an informal name among recovery professionals: la fenice — the phoenix. The old company accumulates debts, the new company inherits the business, and the creditors are left holding claims against a shell with declining assets.

Deployment

Italian law provides specific instruments for exactly this scenario. We filed a decreto ingiuntivo (injunctive payment order) against the original entity through the Tribunale di Milano. Simultaneously, we filed an azione revocatoria (fraudulent transfer action) under Article 2901 of the Italian Civil Code, challenging the transfer of client contracts to the "2.0" entity.

The decreto ingiuntivo was issued within 40 days — standard for the Milan tribunal. The fraudulent transfer action, which typically takes longer, was accelerated by our counsel's request for provisional measures under Article 700 CPC, arguing that the debtor was actively dissipating assets. The court granted interim relief, freezing the "2.0" entity's ability to enter new contracts with the transferred clients.

The debtor's director requested a meeting within two weeks of the freeze order. The meeting took place in our Milan office. It lasted forty minutes. The director proposed a structured payment plan. We counter-proposed immediate payment of 80% with the remainder in 60 days. He accepted.

Resolution

Total recovered: €540,000 plus €18,200 in statutory interest under Italian Legislative Decree 231/2002 (the Late Payment Directive implementation). Timeline: 67 days from mandate to final wire transfer. The fraudulent transfer action was withdrawn as part of the settlement, allowing the "2.0" entity to continue operating — but with our client's invoices paid in full.

The Milan intelligence note

Italy's commercial environment operates on dual tracks: the formal legal framework, which is sophisticated and creditor-friendly when properly deployed, and the informal business culture, which favours relationships, patience, and flexibility. International creditors who operate exclusively on the informal track — sending polite reminders, accepting verbal promises, extending further credit — tend to discover the limits of patience at the point where the debtor has already restructured.

The creditors who recover are the ones who move to the formal track decisively and early. A decreto ingiuntivo filed within the first 120 days of non-payment sends a signal that no number of phone calls can replicate. It tells the debtor that you understand Italian procedure, you have counsel in Milan, and you are not going to wait for the phoenix to fly.

If you're owed money by a Milan-based entity in fashion, manufacturing, or any sector where relationships have been governing payment behaviour, brief our Milan team before the phoenix takes flight.