Argentine Case Law
On December 30, 2025, the National Court of Appeals in Commercial Matters of the City of Buenos Aires (the “Court”) issued a judgment in the case “Ciprés Plax S.R.L. s/ Quiebra” [Ciprés Plax S.R.L. s/ Bankruptcy], in which it determined the fees of the professionals involved in the bankruptcy proceedings.
The dispute revolved around the application of Section 267 of Law No. 24,522 (the Bankruptcy and Reorganization Law – “LCQ”, after its spanish acronym), which provides that the fees of officers and professionals are to be calculated based on the realized assets, and may not, in total, be lower than four percent of such assets nor less than three times the salary of a first-instance court clerk of the relevant jurisdiction (whichever is higher), nor exceed twelve percent of the realized assets.
The low complexity of the case allowed for the application of the exceptional solution set forth in Section 271 of the LCQ, which authorizes courts to depart from the statutory minimum fees when the nature, scope, quality, or outcome of the professional work, or the value of the assets involved, indicate that a strict application of such minimums would result in a disproportion between the importance of the work performed and the resulting compensation.
In this regard, the Court noted that the bankruptcy trustee had not carried out any significant additional tasks that would justify a higher remuneration, and that a mechanical application of Section 267 of the LCQ would lead to a disproportionate result in light of the tasks actually performed. Consequently, the Court set the fees below the statutory minimum thresholds.
