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Joint R3 & INSOL Europe International Restructuring Conference
London, 27 June 2024
 
This illustrious joint conference returned to London for the 18^th occasion since the collaboration between R3 and INSOL Europe began in 2003, writes Paul Newson, INSOL Europe CEO. Only the COVID-19 lockdown halted the series which was successfully relaunched in 2023.
 
On a very hot day in the capital, almost all of the 120 delegates who had registered for the (sold-out) event converged on the air-conditioned halls of 11 Cavendish Square for the annual event, which promised an international programme with a mix of hot-topics and updates from the best selection of speakers it was possible to squeeze into the programme. With delegates from jurisdictions such as France, the Netherlands and Germany, and as far afield as India and the US, the conference certainly has a big reputation to live up to.
 
The day began with quick introductions from the Conference Chair, our member Sebastiaan van den Berg (RESOR, The Netherlands) and Presidents of the associations jointly responsible for the event, Giorgio Corno (INSOL Europe, Italy) and Tim Cooper (R3, UK).
 
Following the well-established programme, the first session featured case law updates from Henry Phillips and Richard Fisher KC (Barristers, South Square London), who ran through the main points of the recent BHS case and discussed the question of fiduciary duty and miscreant trading vs wrongful trading. They also looked at the UNCITRAL Model Law in the context of recent multi-jurisdictional insolvencies, including famous crypto cases such as Three Arrows (BVI) and FTX (Bahamas). With regard to proprietary claims, directors’ sanctions and parallel proceedings, they thought things are working well in the UK, but not so well in the EU.
 
The next panel discussion picked up on this theme and featured cross-border restructuring experts Giorgio Corno (Studio Corno, Italy), Lindsay Hingston & Marvin Knapp (Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer, UK) and our member Professor Omar Salah (Tilburg University, Netherlands), who discussed the growing trend in multi-process restructurings. Giorgio Corno observed that EU legislation requires minimum standards, not hormanisation as such, whilst Martin Knapp made the observation that, in terms of regulation and harmonisation, we are beginning to speak the same language across the EU, but with different accents. 
 
In an enlightening panel on Artificial Intelligence (AI), John Willcock (Global Turnaround) invited AI expert Presley Warner (Sullivan & Cromwell) to give the audience a brief history of AI from its beginnings in the 1950s, through chess computers, spell checkers, spam filters and Amazon tracking your purchases and making selections based on your browsing history, through to the present day with ChatGPT and beyond. He explained that predictive tools such as these need immense amounts of data to provide simple results (with an equally immense need for power, some 100 times the energy use of a simple Google search) and, when they run out of data, that is when they start making things up, so what will happen when they have accessed all known data? 
 
Machine learning will improve at an exponential rate that we can only imagine and consistently under-estimate, so there is plenty of scope for development and improvement. Presley wrapped up by answering John’s final question – when will we all be made redundant? – by reassuring us that probably never: AI is good at objective analysis, but humans will always be better at subjective analysis and looking at the wider picture, so the likelihood is that we will all use AI more rather than be replaced by it.
 
A highlight of the afternoon was the panel on sanctions of insolvent Russian-related entities, following the invasion of Ukraine by Russia in February 2022. Panel leader Enda Lowry (Teneo, Ireland) began by explaining the European Union legislative framework, implemented in order to effectively introduce the sanctions system, with case studies from Eoin O'Shea (CMS Cameron McKenna Nabarro, UK) on Petropavlovsk Plc (UK), our members Joanna Gasowski (Wolf Theiss, Poland) on Go-Sport (Poland) and Enda himself on GTLK (Ireland).
 
The final session of the day was the hotly anticipated appearance by our Judicial Wing member Lord Justice Snowden, who spoke from his vast experience on how to successfully get jurisdiction for international cases in the UK, emphasising the need for judges to talk to each other more to find common ground, adding that, in his opinion, they could reference the UNCITRAL Model Law more than they are doing currently.