Massekredit (estate loan)

A Massekredit is debt the insolvency administrator takes on as a liability of the estate (§ 55 InsO) to keep operations running during the proceeding — payroll, inventory purchases, energy, ongoing rent. It's usually provided by specialised lenders or distressed-debt funds, since the company's original house bank rarely extends new money after an insolvency filing.

Common mix-up: the first three months of payroll after filing are usually pre-financed not through a Massekredit but through Insolvenzgeld (statutory wage-guarantee insurance paid by the Federal Employment Agency) — a separate, statutorily regulated mechanism, not a Massekredit in the strict sense.

For buyers, an existing Massekredit is mainly a signal: the administrator is pursuing a going-concern sale rather than piecemeal liquidation and is willing to take on extra debt against the estate for it. It never finances the buyer's purchase price and is not transferred to them at closing.