Law Firm BREMEN Rechtsanwälte joins PLUTA

On 1 March 2017, PLUTA Rechtsanwalts GmbH is adding new locations to their network. Yet another well-known law firm, BREMEN Rechtsanwälte, is joining the insolvency and restructuring company which is active throughout Germany. This partnership has a staff of 12 employees at its offices in Düsseldorf and Aachen. PLUTA is thus further consolidating their market position across Germany as part of their expansion strategy.

Michael Bremen, who manages the office carrying his name, has been regularly appointed as an insolvency administrator by the local courts of Düsseldorf, Mönchengladbach and Aachen in all sizes of insolvency proceedings for more than 25 years. He is a restructuring expert and chartered accountant, an attorney specialising in labour law and insolvency law as well as being a member of the board in the German Association of Insolvency Administrators (VID). His responsibilities in the VID include quality issues, such as the principles of proper insolvency administration and the development of restructuring proceedings prior to insolvency as recently introduced by a draft EU directive. Mr Michael Bremen studied law at the University of Bonn. After his first professional years in Stuttgart, in 1988 he joined the law office, which he is today the sole owner of. On 1 March 2017 Michael Bremen will become a fellow partner as well as a managing director of PLUTA Rechtsanwalts GmbH.

“I am very pleased that Michael Bremen and his team have joined us. This means that we are gaining experienced experts. The present merger is also an important building block, which we can use to extend our presence in North Rhine-Westphalia further,” said the founder, managing director and partner Michael Pluta.

Michael Bremen added: “In future it will be even more important to have multiple locations. PLUTA has an excellent network extending across Germany and, with their broad range of services in the areas of insolvency administration, restructuring and legal consulting, they are keeping pace with the times. We will both benefit from this merger, from PLUTA’s strong brand and from a strong presence in the Rhineland.“

Apart from Michael Bremen, two further attorneys will strengthen the PLUTA team: Dr Uwe Paul, who has issued numerous publications on the insolvency plan, tax law and the German Debenture Bond Act, and Oliver Westkamp, as well as all of the other current employees. In recent years, Michael Bremen has supervised not only proceedings focussing on non-performing loans (NPLs) in the field of commercial property financing, but also unusual proceedings which don’t occur every day, such as those concerning the assets of a privately owned university, which were swiftly and successfully sold to Rheinische Fachhochschule Köln gGmbH. He has also focussed on the restructuring of companies in accordance with the labour law, both prior to and during insolvency proceedings. Furthermore, the ISR, Institute for Insolvency and Restructuring Law, was founded at his initiative at the law faculty of Heinrich Heine University in Düsseldorf, where he is a member of the advisory board and which he energetically supports as a member and chairman of the Düsseldorf Association for Insolvency and Restructuring Law.