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

The meeting was hosted by NatWest at their London offices and opened by Sean Pilcher, Fellow, INSOL International, NatWest. Alastair Beveridge, immediate past-President of INSOL Europe and member of the INSOL Executive Committee welcomed the delegates and introduced the panel.

Chaired by Raquel Agnello QC (Erskine Chambers), 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 – started the discussion observing that the credit market have seen an increasing complexity of capital structures and new classes of lenders and investors.

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 asthe 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.

After an hour or so of lively debate 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. Delegates enjoyed light canapés after the event and spent some time networking before dispersing into the City.

During the past few weeks some of our members have been the target of malicious emails asking them to send a large amount of money urgently by bank transfer. As it is common for everyone to have multiple email addresses it is not always easy to spot if these are genuine, especially if they appear to come from a trusted contact. 

Please remember that our Council or Executive will never contact anyone requesting money in this way. Should you be the recipient of any such emails, however genuine they appear, please forward them onto Caroline Taylor at the email address below so we can investigate the source.

With Chris Laughton as Congress Facilitator kicking off proceedings, Alastair Beveridge (Outgoing President) began by welcoming delegates to a rainy, but beautiful, Copenhagen.

A packed day and a half of technical sessions, all the various groups and constituencies having met on the eve of conference, saw proceedings start with a challenge by the keynote speaker Professor Vincent Hendricks of the University of Copenhagen who drew the attention of delegates to the profusion of information available every day. 

Though it added to knowledge, he said, it did not mean an increase in wisdom. In light of that benchmark for the event, the technical agenda strove hard not just to deliver information, but to do so in a way that added to experience and expertise.

The first day did not spare the delegates. Packed sessions on the Preventive Restructuring Directive (“PRD”) and Brexit brought conference up to date on signal events in the year, one firmly past, the other yet to happen (if indeed at all). For devotees of the PRD, the subtle detail of the application of the viability test and the extent and necessity for court supervision featured. For those weary of Brexit, the panel brought some interest back to current development by charting the competition between jurisdictions for business. Four key sectors were at the forefront in the break-out sessions: healthcare, airlines, retail and MSMEs, all adding to the impression of much ferment still happening in the industry. Post-lunch, the key themes of the PRD and Brexit appeared again with debates on cram-down and recognition of insolvency-related judgments. In between, the fate of non-performing loans and a study of the OW Bunker collapse from the Danish perspective added spice to the overall mix.

On day two, a second keynote speaker from Aalborg University, Professor Henning Jørgensen, spurred the Congress on to consider the future environment within which business would be developing with traditional concerns for employees still uppermost in policy-makers minds. Sessions on litigation funding, the value and disposal of social media accounts, directors’ duties in the context of early warning systems and the prepacking of employees as part of business transfers then provided a great deal of focus for attendees on issues of note in practice. Following the close and handover to Piya Mukherjee (Incoming President), delegates enjoyed an afternoon of leisure in the city before the gala dinner. Located in the tent-like structure of Wallman’s Circus Building, the event raised the roof with applause for the technical expertise and skill of the performers, incidentally setting a new standard for gala dinner entertainment. With echoes of the music and performance lingering in the night, delegates departed with thoughts of Sorrento next year.

A full report by Myriam Mailly, Joint Technical Officer, and Paul Omar, Technical Research Coordinator, will appear in the next edition of Eurofenix.