in the Italian courts 11 new bankruptcy proceedings are opened every year, while 83 remain to be closed. This is the photograph taken on 31 December 2019 by Cherry Sea, the innovative Cherry Bit observatory set up by Giovanni Bossi - a company that develops artificial intelligence algorithms applied to the world of non-performing credit - which through the portals of the Ministry of Justice has created an analysis of the data relating to all the bankruptcies recorded in the 140 Italian courts from 2010 to the end of 2019.
Stock of bankruptcy proceedings: the ranking
The analysis, in particular, focused on the data of the twenty most active courts in 2019, i.e. those that handled the highest number of new proceedings, highlighting how of the 5.472 cases opened overall in the twelve months, i.e. 35%, it was taken over only by the courts of Milan (1.019) and Rome (897), the latter with an important gap compared to the third in the ranking (Turin, 289). Using the same sample, it emerges that the capitals of Lazio and Lombardy are also the courts with the highest number of pending proceedings, respectively 5.196 and 5.023 (the third is Bari with 2.091, the court with the lowest number of proceedings is Genoa with 748). representing approximately 30% of the total number of proceedings that as at 31 December 2019 were accumulated in the twenty courts in question.
New proceedings and pending procedures
Analyzing the history and the percentage change in the number of cases in the last five years of activity (2015 - 2019), it can be seen that in most of the selected courts the number of open procedures has decreased over the years and consequently also the number of pending situations . The examples demonstrating the best trend are represented by Turin, Vicenza and Naples, in whose courts the number of new open cases has been reduced by 37, 20 and 34%, making it possible to lighten the burden of pending cases by 43, 24 and 21% respectively. There are two cases, in the courts of Cagliari and Catania, in which an increase of 17 and 15% in the opening of new cases is followed by an increase in pending procedures respectively of 5 and 1%), while the most negative data are recorded in Verona, Florence and Busto Arsizio, where despite a reduction in the number of open cases (-1, -11 and -14%), further pending procedures have accumulated (with variations of 9, 2 and 0,6% respectively ).
The times of justice: Bari more than three times slower than Turin
To offer an estimate of the duration of the proceedings, the metric of the Disposition Time (DT) was used, already adopted by the CEPEJ (European Commission for the Efficiency of Justice), which can be interpreted as the time necessary to dispose of the proceedings pending at the end of a given year. By applying this parameter to the sample identified, it emerges that Turin, the third most active court in 2019 in Italy with 289 open cases, is the one able to close pending cases in the shortest time (2,8 years); at the bottom of this ranking, however, is Bari, with 10,1 years needed to close the pending cases, despite "only" 174 cases opened in 2019. In the last 5 years (2015-2019) the average of the Disposition Times of the twenty courts in question shows a constant overall improvement in the figure, which went from 7,97 years in 2015 to 5,40 in 2019, highlighting a trend with the only exceptions being the courts of Catania and Cagliari, where in the same period there was an increase of DT respectively from 7,6 to 9,3 years and from 5,5 to 6,3. In the same period of time, the courts with the best average DT are Turin, Bergamo and Milan, with a value between 4 and 5 years, while the courts with the longest time to settle pending cases are Padua, Verona, Catania and Bari , with DT between 7 and 11 years.
In 2019, 48 new bankruptcy proceedings and 288 pending for each judge
To have an even more in-depth view, the data of the Disposition Time have been crossed with the parameter of the Clearance Rate (CR), which indicates the rate of clearance of the procedures by the court and is measured as the ratio between the number of concluded in the year and those open (a CR greater than 100% indicates that the court, in a year, manages to "dispose" more proceedings than it opens). From the observations conducted by Cherry Sea on the twenty most active courts in 2019, it appears that only half of these are able to close more cases than they open, maintaining a DDT of less than 5 years, while a quarter (in particular the courts of Milan, Florence, Verona, Catania, Cagliari) continues to accumulate practices and to have a TD of more than five years.
Furthermore, the analysis by Cherry's observatory highlights how efficiency levels are often linked to an insufficient availability of judges assigned to the bankruptcy section: Milan, for example, was the second court in Italy in 2019 by number of delegated magistrates to this type of procedure (10 on a par with Naples and behind Rome with 12), however, it found itself managing over 1.000 new cases last year, for an average of 100 for each judge, and has a CR of 97%. Similarly, Cagliari and Florence, courts with CR equal to 89 and 95% and DT of more than 6 years, in 2019 accused loads respectively of 89 and 83 procedures that occurred for each judge, while courts such as Naples, Turin and Bologna, which boast a CR between 180 and 240% and a DT of less than 4 years can count on a ratio of new cases per judge of less than 35 units. On the other hand, the Bari court, which also has a CR of 118%, has a DT of more than 10 years, a symptom of difficulty in disposing of the procedures accumulated in the past, despite employing the same number of judges in Turin (6).
Overall, among the twenty courts with the highest number of cases opened in 2019, the average is 48 new cases per judge per year. As regards pending proceedings, however, the average is 288,85 for each judge, with tips of over 500 practices for judge in the courts of Milan, Cagliari and Florence. «The difficulty in dealing with bankruptcies in the courts is a chronic emergency of our country, which today finds itself having to deal with the other emergency, the health one - comments Giovanni Bossi, founder of Cherry - The real risk is that the pandemic put a further brake on the disposal of procedures, which was already overloaded at the end of last year. Speeding up times and making judicial recovery procedures more efficient is a fundamental objective for the restart, to put "frozen" capital and assets back into circulation in the real economy. This is an important issue not only for the world of finance, but also for businesses, both those that have difficulty accessing credit and those that, due to the slowness of bankruptcy procedures, struggle to recover their credits, risking bankruptcy in turn.
