Konkursberedskap: fixed-price assessment, what you get and when comes down to a fixed scope delivered once the file is complete: board-level exposure ahead of possible insolvency, the paper trail behind any control balance sheet work, and the creditor correspondence read later for what the board knew and when. It excludes litigation strategy and the petition itself.
Who this concerns
A konkursberedskap assessment is built for boards watching a specific set of warning signs rather than boards in general: two consecutive quarters of falling equity, a supplier or landlord that has moved from reminder letters to a formal demand, or a dispute with a public sector counterparty that has started to affect payment terms. It also fits companies that have not yet received a demand but know their next annual accounts will show a position the board has not documented a response to.
Groups with a foreign parent add a specific complication. Reporting inside the group usually runs through finance functions based outside Sweden, and those reporting lines are not built to capture what Swedish board liability actually requires: dated board minutes, a documented basis for continuing to trade, and a record of what the board knew at each point. Where the parent is foreign, the Swedish board's own paper trail becomes the only record that will hold up under Swedish rules, regardless of what the group's consolidated reporting shows.
Suppliers to public sector buyers carry a second layer of exposure on top of the ordinary board question: a formal insolvency, or even the appearance of financial distress, can trigger exclusion from current framework agreements and future tenders. For that audience the assessment is read against procurement eligibility as well as board liability, and the report is structured to say so explicitly where it applies.
This sits inside our insolvency and restructuring practice, and the assessment is the fixed-scope entry point into that work rather than a standalone product.
What the law says
Under Swedish law as it currently stands, personal exposure for board members attaches once the company's financial position crosses defined thresholds and the board fails to take the steps the law requires in response. What matters for a konkursberedskap review is not the outcome of that test in the abstract, but whether the board can show, with dated documents, that it recognised the position and acted on it within the time the law allows. A board that acted correctly but left no contemporaneous record is, in practice, in a similar position to a board that did not act at all: the record is what a trustee or a creditor's counsel reads afterwards, not the board's own account of events given after the fact.
The same principle governs creditor-facing conduct. Continuing to take deliveries, accept payment, or enter new commitments after the point where the board should reasonably have recognised the company's position exposes directors personally, and the assessment is built to surface exactly where that point falls on the available paper trail, not to argue where it should fall.
How it works in practice
What the review covers
The assessment works from the company's own records rather than from a general description of the business. It reads the most recent annual accounts against the trend in the two years before them, reads board minutes for the period in which the warning signs appeared, and reads correspondence with the creditors whose behaviour has changed, whether that is a landlord who has stopped granting extensions or a lender who has started asking for more frequent reporting. From that material it produces a single written finding: what the board's documented position currently supports, and where the gap sits between what has been recorded and what Swedish liability standards require.
What is deliberately excluded
The review does not draft or file a control balance sheet, and it does not represent the board in a bankruptcy petition, whether filed by the company or by a creditor. It does not set litigation strategy for a dispute already before a court, and it does not extend into a criminal exposure analysis. Where the facts raise a question of that kind, the relevant material and privilege questions are handled as a separate matter, and that classification is not something this assessment answers.
Documents requested before work starts
Work does not begin on a partial file. The request covers the two most recent sets of annual accounts, board minutes since the point the board itself identifies as the start of the concern, correspondence with the creditors carrying the largest exposure, and any formal demand or reminder already received. Where a parent company guarantee or group cash pooling arrangement exists, the relevant agreement is requested as well, because it changes where the board's own exposure actually sits.
How the report is structured
The output is a single written report addressed to the board, not a memorandum for internal circulation. It states the position as the documents currently support it, flags each point where the record is incomplete rather than assuming it in the board's favour, and closes with the specific next decision the board needs to take, whether that is convening to document a position, commissioning a control balance sheet, or taking no further action because the file already supports the current course.
What to check before requesting the assessment
- The most recent set of annual accounts and the two years before it, in final rather than draft form.
- Board minutes covering the period since the first warning sign, not only the most recent meeting.
- Correspondence with the largest creditors, including any reminder or demand letters received.
- Any parent company guarantee, comfort letter, or cash pooling agreement currently in force.
- Whether a creditor has already indicated an intention to file, since that changes the assessment's urgency and how quickly it needs to be delivered.
Where this sits against a formal control balance sheet
The assessment is not a substitute for a control balance sheet where one is already required. It is the step that establishes whether one is required, and on what timeline, before the board commits resources to producing it. Boards that commission the control balance sheet first and the assessment afterward usually find the two documents were answering slightly different questions, and the sequencing costs time the file did not have.
Does the assessment cover personal liability exposure tied to offences connected to creditors?
The assessment maps where the board's documented conduct currently sits against the general liability standard, which includes conduct toward creditors. It does not itself determine whether a specific offence has occurred. Where the facts point toward that question, liability for creditor-related offences is addressed as a separate, more targeted piece of work.
Is the material produced during the assessment protected as privileged?
Material prepared for the purpose of obtaining legal advice generally carries privilege, but the classification depends on who commissioned the work, how it was requested, and how it was circulated internally. The assessment is structured to preserve that status, and who decides what stays privileged sets out how that classification is actually made and who can waive it.
Does this assessment help once a creditor has already filed a bankruptcy petition?
It can still be useful, but the value changes once a petition is filed, because the clock on the company's response is already running. The deadlines following a creditor's petition are fixed and short, and where a petition is already active, the assessment is scoped around meeting that deadline rather than around a general review of exposure.
The numbers
There is no single figure that describes this assessment, because the scope is set by what the board's own file contains rather than by a fixed count of pages or entities. What does move the scope, and with it the time the review takes, is the number of legal entities the board sits across, the length of the period covered by the warning signs, and whether the board minutes for that period are complete or need to be reconstructed from other sources. A single entity with a clean minute book and a defined starting point for the concern is a narrower piece of work than a group structure with a foreign parent and minutes that stop several months before the position the accounts actually show.
Delivery follows the same logic. The report is produced once the requested file is complete, not on a calendar date fixed in advance, because a partial file produces a partial finding, and a partial finding is the outcome this assessment exists to avoid.
Where it usually goes wrong
The most common failure is treating the assessment as the end of the process rather than the start of it. A finding that the board's position is currently exposed is not itself a remedy, and boards that receive the report and change nothing about how minutes are kept or how creditor correspondence is handled are, in effect, paying to document the same problem twice.
The second failure is commissioning the assessment after a creditor's bankruptcy petition has already been filed and expecting it to operate on the same timeline as before. Once a petition of that kind is active, the fixed statutory deadlines take priority over a general review, and the scope has to narrow to what the board needs to respond to the petition itself.
The third is assuming the assessment substitutes for legal representation once a criminal question has surfaced alongside the insolvency question. The two run under different rules for privilege and disclosure, and conflating them is how material that should have stayed protected ends up in a trustee's file.
What to do next
This material takes a board as far as knowing what the assessment actually covers, what it deliberately leaves out, and what has to be in hand before work can start. Where the underlying question is whether the board's exposure has already crystallised rather than whether it might, the trustee's step-by-step review sets out what happens to this same paper trail once a bankruptcy is actually opened. To scope the assessment against a specific file, request the assessment call.