JCOERE Give Thomson Reuters City Law School Insolvency Presentation

17 May 2019

The Cross-Border Corporate Insolvency and Commercial Law Research Group held its third annual conference on 26th April 2019 at City University in London. It was with great honour that Professor Irene Lynch-Fannon, Principal Investigator of the JCOERE Team, gave the Thomson Reuters City Law School Insolvency Presentation, the key-note address for the conference, along with Post-Doctoral Researcher, Dr Jennifer L. L. Gant. 

The Lecture took the audience through the focus and purpose of the JCOERE project as well as the work done so far. Irene explained the aims of the project which focuses on judicial co-operation in the context of preventive restructuring frameworks already in existence in some European jurisdictions (Ireland and the UK for example) and in light of the Preventive Restructuring Directive, The obligations to co-operate arise in all insolvency proceedings as outlined in Arts 42-44 and 57-59 of the European Insolvency Regulation (Recast). She also described both the substantive and procedural rules which the project will consider as being particularly problematic as obstacles to judicial co-operation.    

Jennifer then took the audience through the work done primarily on the report for Workpackage 1 and 2 to date, including the project map, website and meetings. She also gave a rundown on the work in progress, focusing mainly on the exposition of the Directive being done by research assistant, Aoife Finnerty. It was also announced with great excitement that the questionnaire aimed at mapping preventive restructuring frameworks in the EU had been distributed to our jurisdictional contributors the day prior to the conference. Finally, a brief insight into the first report structure and focus of the literature review was also presented, with the admission that these were still very much in their infancy.  

The rest of the conference consisted of a number of commercial, corporate, and insolvency law related presentations given by academics ranging from well-established professors to PhD students and early career academics. Topics included a discussion of what cross-border insolvency is likely to look like following Brexit; the need for harmonisation to enable cross-border filing in the East African Community; what digitalisation means for the assessment of the centre of main interest for cross-border insolvency; and how group insolvencies could be made more efficient in the EU. There were also presentations on shareholders’ liability from the Central Eastern European perspective and issues of vicarious liability in Russian law.  

The afternoon broke into two sessions with one focusing on insolvency and industry specific issues; corporate insolvencies in the United Kingdom; and pre-packaged procedures and the role of insolvency practitioner. The other break out session revolved around developments in corporate rescue; assessing value in corporate rescue; and the treatment of creditors and shareholders in insolvency.  

This conference was an excellent opportunity to disseminate information about JCOERE, while also engaging in fascinating and current academic debate about related aspects of insolvency law. The JCOERE team wishes to express its gratitude for being honoured with the Thomson Reuters Insolvency Presentation and compliments the organisers, in particular Dr Eugenio Vaccari, for putting on such an interesting and informative event.