The doctrine of subordination of shareholder loans as safeguard of creditors' rights and its development in Lithuania

The crisis and post-crisis situation of the global economy in the recent years had a significant influence on more cautious decisions of company creditors making them to consider their investment possibilities with a more stringent approach. As it is known, in the context of various business transactions, creditors who have received a painful lesson of the economic crisis, nowadays request serious and robust safeguards for their rights. There is also another, a weaker, group of non-voluntary creditors, however, who are not linked by any contractual relations with debtor companies (e.g. third persons who have suffered from bad-faith actions of companies). Therefore, in addition to contracts, which are not effective for non-voluntary creditors, other ex ante safeguards for lender rights are necessary to protect the interests of not only voluntary but also of non-voluntary creditors, in particular when debtor companies have insolvency problems. For the purposes of securing creditors' interests effectively, the doctrine of subordination of shareholder rights has been acquiring a special importance in some of the EU member states recently. The purpose of this study is to analyse the doctrine of subordination of shareholder loans as an alternative safeguard of creditors' rights and to provide an assessment of its effectiveness for the protection of creditors' rights. The research has shown that subordination of shareholder loans is considered an effective safeguard of the rights of voluntary and non-voluntary creditors and is the right alternative for other measures of protection (e.g., contractual) of creditors' rights. At the end of the research, the authors provide specific recommendations to the Lithuanian legislator on the improvement of legislation in this area.