Faculty of law blogs / UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD

Droit & Croissance International Conference on Restructuring

Author(s)

Sophie Vermeille

Posted

Time to read

2 Minutes

Insolvency law is at the center of many important issues arising in the current context of economic stagnation, the crisis of the banking sector in some EU member States and the corporate debt crisis.

The Paris based think tank Droit & Croissance/Rules for growth is honored to host international organisations, national and European institutions as well as banking supervisors and major players of the restructuring industry for its annual international conference on restructuring on October 28, in Paris. The conference will feature four roundtables.

The first roundtable will focus on an important matter of concern for the markets: the consequences of Brexit on the restructuring market in Europe. Until now, London has successfully leveraged its competitive insolvency laws and well trained judiciary to become the pre-eminent European market for restructuring.  Because the British scheme of arrangement was not considered an insolvency proceeding under the European Regulation, Spanish but also German companies have been able to take advantage of the British scheme in order to restructure their debt, without the need to move their actual center of main interest (COMI) to the UK.

Could Brexit mean payback time for continental jurisdictions and change the game for European restructuring ?

The second roundtable will focus on the EU initiative to reform corporate insolvency laws across the EU. Until recently, European institutions have been focused primarily on the issue of bank debt, including the introduction of a bail-in procedure. Corporate insolvency laws have only recently become a priority in Brussels where their critical role in the growth of companies struggling to deleverage their debt in the context of low inflation is now fully acknowledged. This roundtable will highlight different approaches of corporate insolvency law in Europe.

The third roundtable will focus on one of the central issues of concern for European prudential supervisors, namely the deleveraging of the balance sheets of banks in some countries of the European Union. It is now well established that corporate insolvency laws are critical to the development of secondary markets for corporate debt, where hedge funds may play an active role in acquiring non-performing loans.

The final roundtable will focus on the link between the development of bond markets and insolvency law. After the great financial crisis of 2008, economists have been able to agree on very little, except on the fact that the EU economy needs to be far less dependent on bank financing. This has led the European Commission to draw up a plan to develop bond markets in Europe. While it is already very difficult for a debtor company to deal with inefficient insolvency laws when negotiating with a pool of multiple creditors, due to the problems of coordination among creditors, coordination becomes almost impossible when the debt is held by investors spread across bond markets. For this reason, Europe is in urgent need of more efficient corporate insolvency laws.

Academics who want to register should contact: conference@droitetcroissance.fr to get a free pass.

Sophie Vermeille is the President of the Droit & Croissance (Rules for Growth) Institute (‘Droit & Croissance’).

 

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