2023 has been marked by a wave of judicial and extrajudicial recovery requests. Facing difficulties in honoring their obligations to creditors, many companies have sought this path for their financial restructuring. After two periods of significant declines, the number of judicial recovery requests increased again this year. In the 12-month period ending in February 2023, requests already totaled 906. The sector with the largest increase was industry, which grew 15% compared to the 12-month period ending in February 2022 – closely followed by commerce, which grew 14%.

This year also saw some notable cases among restructuring requests—such as Americanas, which opened the year with the announcement of its billion-dollar debt, and Grupo Petrópolis, owner of beer brands well-known to Brazilian consumers. In this post, we summarize some of these cases and highlight the main reasons companies resort to this type of plan.