Insolvency law

Mangels Masse is the phrase a German insolvency court uses when it turns a petition down because the debtor’s assets would not even cover the costs of the proceedings. There is then no estate, no administrator and no distribution; a limited company is simply dissolved. The formula is so blunt that it has escaped from the courtroom. Germans say that a club evening, a reunion or a five-a-side match was called off mangels Masse when too few people turned up or there was too little to go round. The joke works because it swaps the two meanings of die Masse: in the law it is the estate, everything the administrator can lay hands on, and in the pub it is heard as a crowd or a quantity. In a letter from the court nobody is joking. Rejection for lack of assets is the worst outcome a creditor can read: no proceedings at all, and therefore nothing to share.