Piya Mukherjee
President of
INSOL Europe

Over 60 delegates from the financial and banking services sector met in London on the evening of 2nd December for the third joint INSOL International and INSOL Europe Financiers’ Group Panel session and reception.

Alastair Beveridge, immediate past-President of INSOL Europe welcomed the delegates and introduced the panel of top UK industry experts – Simon Baskerville, Latham & Watkins; David Beckett, SC Lowy; Martin Gudgeon, PJT Partners and Nick Ram, Lloyds Banking Group – chaired by Raquel Agnello QC (Erskine Chambers).

The panel reminded the audience that traditionally, companies were funded by loans from traditional banks. Only large, well-established corporations had access to the public debt markets. Corporate loans were syndicated to a limited number of commercial banks that held the debt until final maturity. The banks would monitor the borrower more intensively and the borrower would have had to negotiate with a limited number of banks in the event of stress. 

The rise of loan trading and the number of non-bank institutions in the credit markets made this approach obsolete. Loan trading has made restructuring processes more complex as the number of debt holders has increased and alternative investors can have a more aggressive negotiating stance than traditional banks. Loan trading has the potential to increase lender conflicts during negotiations as the incentives of par lenders are not the same as those of secondary market participants – a restructuring proposal may be acceptable to a lender that bought into the debt at below par, but unacceptable to a primary lender that provided the original loan at par.

The panel explained that in recent years the UK has seen innovative financing structures, such as the credit default swap (CDS) market, in which new stakeholders have created a changing dynamic in restructuring. CDSs are derivatives that behave like insurance contracts, protecting holders against the risk that a company does not repay its debts. The credit default swap market has created a whole new category of investors that stand to make more money on CDSs if a company defaults than they would if it repaid its debts. Other stakeholders, such as regulators, landlords and pension trustees, are becoming increasingly sophisticated and activist in their approach. The panel discussed the impact of these stakeholders on restructuring in an ever more dynamic and evolving market.

The session was brought to a close by Piya Mukherjee, current President of INSOL Europe, with the conclusion that financial restructurings in the UK are inherently complex and more challenging and a request for more people to get involved with the Financiers Group in order to enable this kind of forum to continue.

Find out more about the INSOL Europe Financiers Group on our website.

In December 2017, and in June and December 2018, the Serbian legislator adopted the amendments to the Law on Insolvency. These were the fifth amendments to this Law since its entry into force in early 2010, but the third to this Law made since 2017. 

The purpose of the amendments presented by the legislator was to improve the provisions of the Law on Insolvency already in force, but also to introduce some new processes and to implement the provisions providing conditions for more adequate and better implementation of the existing legal processes, so as to more effectively carry out the insolvency procedure and improve creditor settlement. The most recent Amendments came into force on 9 December 2018 and the Amendments adopted in June 2018 on 1 January 2019. Djuro Djuric, PhD., Professor, College of Economics and Administration, Belgrade, Serbia; Visiting Researcher, University of Saarland, Germany, brings us the novelties of the new law. 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.

The wing’s tasks are to:

• Study & develop legal framework for insolvency tech & digital assets;
• Educate & train INSOL Europe members (conference panels; specialized conferences / seminars / meetings; regular contributions or even column in eurofenix decicated to insolvency tech & digital assets); and
• Find new members for INSOL Europe (including new type of members from the insolvency tech industry)

For more information about this new Wing, visit the INSOL Europe website.

He has published in most of the leading law journals on various aspects of private international law and cross-border transactions and he is co-author, with professor Miguel Virgós, of "The European Insolvency Regulation: Law and Practice," The Hague, Kluwer, 2004. He is also the author of the course “Cross-Border Listed Companies”, published in the Recueil de cours of The Hague Academy, vol. 328 (2007), pp. 1-171. He has represented the Spanish government as national expert in different international organizations, such as UNIDROIT, UNCITRAL, The Hague Conference or the Council of the European Union.

Prof. Garcimartín replaces Florian Bruder who has handed in his resignation at the end of 2019 after having served on the Board of the Academic Forum for many years, and whose services are gratefully acknowledged by INSOL Europe.

Prof. Garcimartín joins an internationally diverse Board comprising Tomáš Richter (Chair, The Czech Republic), Line Langkjaer (Secretary, Denmark), Prof. Jessica Schmidt (Germany), Jennifer Gant (UK/USA & Ireland), Luigi Lai (Italy and Poland), Prof. Rolef De Weijs (The Netherlands), and Gert-Jan Boon (The Netherlands).

For more information about the Academic Forum, visit the INSOL Europe website.