Piya Mukherjee
President of
INSOL Europe

A little about me… I have come from Johnson Matthey, a FTSE 100 listed company. I worked as Executive Assistant to the Chief Executive of Clean Air and Project Manager Officer. Clean Air is one of JM’s four businesses. Clean Air as a sector is a global business with turnover of £2.5bn, 6500 employees and 17 manufacturing sites. In the last year I have been formally qualifying for my project manager certifications which I now have and have spent the last 3.5 months in Poland as the Project Manager for a 1.5m Euro office fit out project. I hope to bring some of this experience to INSOL Europe and I am excited to see where the association will be in another 5-10 years. I have also had experience working for an association for search consultants so this is not completely unfamiliar territory!
 
I look forward working with you all and meeting some of you later in the year at our Annual Congress in Sorrento.”

As you are aware, the situation regarding the new Coronavirus is changing on a daily basis. INSOL Europe has been closely monitoring developments of the impact of COVID-19 at local and global levels. The health and well-being of the INSOL Europe community are our priority.

Following advice provided by the World Health Organization (WHO) and European governments, many of our forthcoming events are now affected.

• The joint conference in Zagreb, planned for 27-28 March, has now been postponed.
• The joint conference with INSOLAD on 11 June in Amsterdam has now been postponed.
• The joint conference with R3, planned for 2 July in London, has now been cancelled.
• The Eastern European Countries Committee Conference, Kyiv, Ukraine, on 21-22 May is now postponed until the Autumn.  

INSOL Europe will continue to monitor all developments related to COVID-19 and will advise as soon as possible on future developments. 

Please note that our Annual Congress in Sorrento, Italy, 1-4 Ocober 2020 is still going ahead as planned at the moment.

For any additional information, please contact Harriet Taylor.

Our thoughts are with our colleagues around the world impacted by COVID-19.

The 'Conference on European Restructuring and Insolvency Law' (CERIL) has published an Executive Statement 2020-1 on COVID-19 and insolvency legislation which can be found on our Technical Resources website.

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.

No claim stands forever automatically, and debtors are protected by a kind of prescription (limitation) period set by legislation. Through the passage of time, by prescription, creditors lose their right to collect the receivables owed to them. The prescription period may refer to the time limit in which the material receivable expires or to a procedural time limit within which the creditor must file a claim in court. Usually, the material time limit can be interrupted by instituting formal or informal proceedings or notifications against the debtor before the prescription time lapses.

The effect of an interruption is a new or an extended prescription period. The creditor’s right to unlimited interruptions means a lifelong debt burden for a debtor. To cure this distress, many countries in the European Union and elsewhere have adopted different kinds of debt adjustment procedures for private persons. However, these proceedings may be time consuming and they are not suitable for all, including debtors with irregular incomes or entrepreneurs who may have difficulties in implementing the repayment plan, writes Tuula Linna, Professor, Faculty of Law, University of Helsinki, Finland. 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.

17 April submission deadline approaching soon!

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. 

Photo: Monique Shaw

The foundation was established in 2016, upon the donation by Emeritus Professor Bob Wessels of his extensive private book collection, which has now been made available in the library of the Leiden Law School. The board of the foundation is comprised of Professor Matthias Haentjens, Professor Reinout Vriesendorp, Professor Eric Dirix, Professor Stephan Madaus, and Dr. Paul Omar. Bob Wessels is the patron of the Foundation. The foundation has taken the initiative of organising a two-day PhD workshop in Leiden on an annual basis to enable PhD students to present and discuss their research with colleagues and eminent scholars.

Read the full report by Gert-Jan Boon, Axel Krohn and Chiara Lunetti, participants at the workshop, on our website.

The Richard Turton Award provides an educational opportunity for a qualifying participant to attend the INSOL Europe Annual Congress, which this year will be held from 1-4 October in Sorrento, Italy.

The award is open to applicants who:

• Are a national of a developing or emerging nation;
• Work in or are actively studying insolvency & restructuring law and practice;
• Students satisfying the nationality requirement, but studying in another country, are also eligible to apply;
• Are under 35 years of age at the date of the application; and
• Have sufficient command of spoken English to benefit from the conference technical programme.

The successful applicant will be asked to write a paper of 3,000 words on a subject of insolvency and turnaround to be agreed with the panel. This paper will then be published in summary in one or more of the Member Associations' journals and on their websites.

For full details including the closing date for entries, visit our website here.

We are pleased to announce that we will be holding a joint conference with R3 and the Fraud Advisory Panel in London on 27 October 2020 at the Chartered Accountants’ Hall (Moorgate Place), London. 

Full details will be announced on our website shortly. A draft programme can be downloaded here.