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February 2020: Conference News & Updates |
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Dear Members
February – and the weather is (as always, I am tempted to say) miserable here in Denmark.
These are challenging times.
COVID-19 or Coronavirus is on everyone’s minds. My thoughts go to all the people who have lost their dear ones and those whose lives and livelihood are affected. Kudos to the Chinese for their endeavors to contain the virus and prevent further spread.
The wide repercussions of the COVID-19 demonstrate that we are all connected in this global world. One thing is the spread of the virus to other parts of the world. Another thing is the impact on the stock markets. Several industries face the consequences of the virus – e.g. the textile industry whose products to a large extent are manufactured in China. We hold our breath and hope for the best.
In INSOL Europe we also recognise that we are part of the global world. INSOL Europe is as an association member of INSOL International and all INSOL Europe members enjoy the benefits of this membership. INSOL International’s annual conference will be held this year in Cape Town, South Africa from 15th to 17th March and I look forward to representing INSOL Europe at the Members Association Roundtable and the conference itself.
Preparations for INSOL Europe’s Annual Congress in Sorrento from 1st to 4th October are well underway. The technical programme will be revealed in March – and will contain lots of exciting and novel topics, I assure you!
Of course, INSOL Europe has a lot of events in store for you before our main event, see further below.
I am especially pleased to inform you that the dates have now been set for the next High-Level Course which will be held in Athens, Greece. As you may recall, one of the primary goals of INSOL Europe is to assist and participate in the education and training of members interested in European business recovery, turnaround and insolvency issues. As one of the ways to work towards this goal, INSOL Europe offers an ambitious training project, which combines international best practice with national insolvency law of the country in which the course is held. This will be the third time the High-Level Course is held, the preceding hugely successful courses being in Romania and Cyprus. A big thanks to Radu Lotrean and Emmanuelle Inacio for their relentless efforts in making the course happen and prof. Ignacio Tirado for organising the technical programme.
Speak to you again in March!
Piya Mukherjee
President of INSOL Europe
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Piya Mukherjee
President of
INSOL Europe
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This issue is kindly sponsored by:
DLA Piper is a global law
firm with lawyers located
in more than 40 countries throughout the world.
www.dlapiper.com
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EECC 2020 Kyiv, Ukraine: Less than 3 months to go! |
We are pleased to announce that registration is now open for our Eastern European Countries' Committee Conference which will take place in Kyiv from 21-22 May 2020.
Kyiv is located on the Dnieper River. At the banks of the river, stands a monument dedicated to the city’s founders, depicting a boat with the three brothers armed with spears and a bow standing at the stern and their sister standing on the prow with her arms stretched as opening for a new beginning. This evocative image, the embodiment of struggle, determination and courage, is illustrated today by Ukrainian insolvency professionals. This means that the Ukrainian insolvency profession is full of opportunities. On 21 October 2019 the Ukrainian Code on Bankruptcy Proceedings, adopted earlier this year, became effective.
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The new law aims to strengthen the rights of creditors, improve the procedure of debtors’ assets sale at bankruptcy auctions, provide precise mechanisms for restoring the solvency of debtors, and enhance the overall efficiency of bankruptcy proceedings. The Code introduces the concepts of personal bankruptcy and simplifies corporate bankruptcy. Moreover, their efforts of creating an Insolvency Practitioners’ Association have paid off, and recently they had their first general meeting. Similar to the Dnieper, as legend states, blessed by his father to transform into a river and catch up to his sister, Ukrainian insolvency practitioners are moving fast and we look forward to sampling a little bit of their innovative practice. It is this determination that makes Ukraine the perfect place for our 16th EECC Conference!
Network with colleagues
We hope you will join us, as we have prepared many surprises and good entertainment, and we encourage you to come early and stay late. On 21 May (Thursday, pre-conference) there is the INSOL Europe optional networking dinner at the restaurant Publicist during which the guests can have a taste of both Ukraine’s culinary and music traditions. On Friday evening there is the Young Members Reception at the Rockfellow 210 (just five minutes walk from the hotel).
Register today or Download the Congress Brochure for full details.
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Academic Conference Sorrento 2020: Call for Papers |
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The Academic Forum of INSOL Europe will be hosting its 16th annual conference in Sorrento, Italy, on Wednesday 30 September–Thursday 1 October 2020, immediately prior to INSOL Europe's main annual conference taking place in Sorrento from 1 to 4 October, 2020.
Expressions of interest are invited for the delivery of research papers within the overall academic conference's theme, which will be: “The Emerging New Landscape of European Restructuring and Insolvency”.
The theme is intended to focus on, inter alia, the following overall topics:
• Commentaries on the 2019/1023 Directive as such
• First reports on implementation issues arising in the EU Member States
• Other related topics.
The closing date for proposals is 17 April 2020.
For further details, please visit the Academic Website here.
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High-Level Course on Insolvency 2020 - Athens, Greece |
The INSOL Europe High-Level Course on Insolvency is an ambitious training project that for its third edition, will be held in Athens, (Greece), both for the importance of the jurisdiction's legal tradition and for its recent reforms in the insolvency area.
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Classes will be seminar-based and fully interactive. The training will have a theoretical base but fundamentally a practical approach using a case-study methodology for each module. Target participants would be all professionals involved in the insolvency practice of the jurisdiction, with special focus on high-level lawyers, insolvency practitioners, judges, chartered accountants, auditors, lenders, economists, academics, business consultants and state officials of the relevant insolvency agency.
The third edition of the course will be in Greece and the objectives of the course will be to convey the main elements of international best practice and to deepen the knowledge and interpretation of Greek insolvency law.
The course will be split into 3 modules:
- International best practice and comparative examples (29 & 30 May 2020)
- An analysis of the main elements of Greek insolvency law (to be announced)
- Paper submission and workshop (to be announced)
For further information, please email: emmanuelleinacio@insol-europe.org
For registration queries, please email: harriet@insol-europe.org
CLOSING DATE FOR REGISTRATIONS: 30 APRIL 2020
With thanks to our Supporters
Course Partner: Athens Bar Association - www.dsa.gr
Course Sponsor: CITR - www.citr.ro
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Special Offers for Members of INSOL Europe |
We have arranged many special offers for our members, including exclusive discounts on publications and events as well as special rates for advertising in Eurofenix, our quarterly journal. These are often time limited and updated regularly on the Members Offers section of the website.
Offers are changed regularly and currently include:
- 20% discount off selected titles from Oxford University Press
- 10% discount off an individual subscription to Global Restructuring Review
- A discounted 'Pro' profile on SpeakerHub
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INSIDE Story: Examinership: Irish Rescue Process 30 Years Later |
In 1990, Ireland introduced a rescue process which reflects all of the main components of the Preventive Restructuring Directive (1023/2019). This procedure was originally contained in a larger scheme of corporate law reform and consolidation designed in the late 1980s, but the rescue process was extracted and passed hurriedly in September 1990 to respond to a crisis in the Irish beef industry.
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This first outing of what was called the Examinership process was a spectacular success leading to the rescue of the Goodman Group. The remainder of the original legislation was passed later in 1990. The Examinership process contains all of the key features in the Directive as explained by Irene Lynch Fannon, Professor of Law, University College Cork, Ireland. Read the full story and other articles here.
If you would like the opportunity to have your Inside Story published in a future edition, please email Communications Manager, Paul Newson for details.
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INSOL Europe reaches out in Portugal |
Portugal is one of the European countries with the lowest level of representation in INSOL Europe with currently only 24 members.
Accordingly, with the main objective of boosting INSOL Europe’s activity in Portugal, Alberto Núñez-Lagos, partner of Uría Menendez, organised the first of a series of meetings that took place during last year. This group has grown in the meantime and it now includes some of Portugal’s leading insolvency professionals.
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Among them are judges, consultants, insolvency administrators and lawyers. This group has held regular meetings in the offices of the most renowned law firms in Portugal.
On 17 January, Nuno Líbano Monteiro (partner and head of the Insolvency and Restructuring team at PLMJ, the largest law firm in Portugal) and Catarina Guedes de Carvalho (a PLMJ managing associate), both members of INSOL Europe, organised a meeting at their offices in Lisbon, which brought together 30 people, including lawyers from the leading law firms, partners from Deloitte and KPMG, and a number of top insolvency administrators.
The speakers were João Rodrigo Santos, CEO of Athena Equity Partners and Prof. Catarina Serra, a well-recognised academic the area of insolvency, judge of the Supreme Court of Justice and also a recognised member of INSOL Europe, in the Judicial and Academic Forum, and also co-editor of Eurofenix.
On the agenda was a discussion of the role of venture capital funds in the restructuring of companies and the implementation of Directive (EU) 2019/1023, on preventive restructuring frameworks and on discharge of debt and disqualifications. A decision was also taken to make a commitment to the INSOL Europe group working actively to get the legislature to implement this Directive in Portugal.
This group is planning to organise further initiatives to bring greater dynamism to the activities of INSOL Europe in Portugal.
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Get involved and make a difference |
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INSOL Europe has many working groups and committees covering a wide aspect of the work that we undertake, including: Anti-Fraud Forum, EU Study Group, Financiers Group, Insolvency Tech & Digital Assets Wing, IOH Forum, Judicial Wing, Turnaround Wing, YANIL and Young Members Group.
These groups are formed by individuals across our membership who work together on current projects, often meeting at one of our many events throughout the year.
If you would like to get involved in one a group that interests you, please visit our website for further information and links to all the groups.
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Annual Congress 2020 Sorrento: Save the date! |
We are pleased to announce that registration will be opening soon for our 39th Annual Congress from 1 to 4 October 2020 in Sorrento (Italy) on the breathtaking Amalfi coast.
Expect lemon groves, implausibly clear waters, a spectacular view of the Gulf of Naples and marvellous sunsets. It was here, though, that Ulysses resisted the tempting chants of the Sirens, tied to the mast of his ship and with his ears plugged with wax!
Expect a tempting technical programme. An enriching plethora of debates and discussions under the visionary overall theme “Towards a New World”. In this new world, Brexit would have happened (…or would it?), Members States will be in the process of transposing the Directive on Pre-Insolvency Restructuring and the new groundbreaking reform of Italian insolvency law would have come into force.
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These and many more visions will be the topics of the sessions in the technical programme put together expertly by our hardworking Congress Technical Committee with co-chairs Giorgio Corno (Studio Corno Avvocati) and Simeon Gilchrist (Edwin Coe) at the helm. We are very pleased and thankful for all the suggestions for topics received from the membership – the Congress Technical Committee has been spoilt for choice!
Visit our website or Download the Congress Flyer for more details.
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Joint Conference in Zagreb, Croatia: Registration now open! |
This conference, on applicable law in cross-border insolvency proceedings, builds on the framework in the European Insolvency Regulation. With view to a possible updating of this framework and the inclusion of other topics within, this conference seeks to explore contemporary legal opinion about the critical issues that a renovation of the framework will face.
Jointly organised by the European Commission DG Justice and Consumers, the Croatian Presidency of the Council of the European Union, with the support of the Ministry of Justice of Croatia, the Faculty of Law of the University of Zagreb and INSOL Europe, this conference will feature specialists from the international insolvency, private international law and other relevant fields.
Hosted in Zagreb, a vibrant city and capital of the latest member state of the European Union, the conference will take place at the premises of the Faculty of Law of the University of Zagreb over a day and a half.
Visit the event website for further information or to register your place.
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We welcome feedback, news and story ideas for future newsletters.
Please send your suggestions to Paul Newson, Communications Manager,
email: paulnewson@insol-europe.org.
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INSOL Europe, PO Box 7149, Clifton, Nottingham. NG11 6WD. Tel: +44 115 8780584 |
www.insol-europe.org |
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Disclaimer: This newsletter is sent to members of INSOL Europe. No responsibility legal or otherwise is accepted by INSOL Europe for any errors, omissions or otherwise. The opinions expressed in the articles that appear are not necessarily shared by any representative of INSOL Europe. |
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