Insolvency, restructuring and the value question

In insolvency and restructuring, value is never an abstraction. The figure attached to a business or its assets can determine whether a company is rescued or wound down, how recoveries are distributed among creditors, and whether the choices made by office holders withstand later scrutiny. It is one of the clearest examples of a high-stakes valuation context — and one where the framework behind the number matters as much as the number itself.

Why value is contested when the stakes are highest

Insolvency valuations are produced under pressure that ordinary engagements rarely face: compressed timescales, incomplete information, and assets that must be valued in less liquid or harder-to-observe markets, where robust valuation governance matters most. Different stakeholders also bring different questions — what an asset might fetch in an orderly sale can differ markedly from what it supports as part of a continuing business. A recognised framework does not remove those tensions, but it makes them visible: the IVS General Standards require a defined scope of work, an explicit basis of value and documentation that allows a conclusion to be traced back to its inputs.

India: IVS notified under the insolvency code

Recognition of that framework in insolvency law is no longer hypothetical. On 1 April 2026, the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Board of India (IBBI) issued Circular IBBI/RV/93/2026, notifying IVS as the standards applicable for valuations under the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code 2016, with immediate effect. The IBBI oversees registered valuer organisations under the Ministry of Corporate Affairs, so the circular connects a global framework directly to the valuers working within one of the world’s larger insolvency regimes.

Bank resolution: an authoritative point of reference

The same pattern appears in the banking sphere. The European Banking Authority’s Handbook on Valuation for Purposes of Resolution, published in February 2019, was developed “having regard to acknowledged international valuation standards and practices, such as the current edition of the International Valuation Standards (IVS) produced by the IVSC, a non-binding although authoritative source of reference on best market practices”. For practitioners involved in bank restructurings and resolutions, that wording is instructive: IVS are not imposed, but they are the recognised benchmark against which resolution valuations are framed.

Recognition within national legal frameworks

Some jurisdictions have gone further and embedded the standards across their commercial law. In Saudi Arabia, the Accredited Valuers Law — a royal decree of 30 May 2012 — requires every valuer in the Kingdom to be accredited by TAQEEM and to follow its rules, which include IVS; the standards have been fully adopted since 2014 and are recognised in the implementing regulations of the bankruptcy and companies laws, alongside those governing eminent domain and commercial collateral.

What this means in practice

For insolvency practitioners, these developments point in one direction. Valuations commissioned in an insolvency or restructuring are increasingly expected to show their workings against a recognised framework: a stated basis of value, disclosed assumptions, and reporting that another professional could follow. The IVSC’s perspectives paper on managing and communicating value uncertainty adds a further discipline — even a fully compliant valuation may yield a range of credible outcomes, and disclosing that range openly strengthens confidence in the work. In distressed situations, where every figure may later be challenged, that transparency is not a courtesy. It is protection.