The "Centre of Main Interests" ("COMI") is one of the most relevant concepts in the international insolvency scene. It is used as the main criterion to assign jurisdiction in cross border insolvency cases in the vast majority of the European countries, the United States and every state that has...

Covid-19 pandemic poses an existential threat to European SMEs' financial resilience with significant consequences for the European economy. Using a unique firm‐level survey data on SME financing conditions and a new measurement approach, this paper focuses on the insolvency risk of European...

We estimate the impact of the COVID-19 crisis on business failures among small and medium-size enterprises (SMEs) in seventeen countries using a large representative firm-level database. We use a simple model of firm cost minimization and measure each firm’s liquidity shortfall during and...

Soon we can expect a new type of company: the European Private Company (Societas Privata Europaea – SPE) aimed at small and medium-sized enterprises in the EU. In this article, we analyse how creditors of future SPEs will be protected. In the first part, we identify on a general level how...

The massive crisis lingering in the Eurozone for almost 4 years now has been confronted by an enhanced integration of fiscal policies and regulations, an increase in the control mechanisms by EU institutions, and by the creation of ex post crisis management instruments to deal with the severe...

Insolvency law faces the challenge of properly liquidating insolvent estates. To achieve this, insolvency representatives need to be skilled, and paid. Countries have adopted different models for compensating insolvency representatives who liquidate estates. While a proper insolvency funding...

The European Commission has proposed a directive on ‘preventive restructuring frameworks' for financially distressed firms. I demonstrate that the proposal is flawed because it creates a refuge for failing firms that should be liquidated, because it rules out going concern sales for viable...

This paper empirically examines whether better governance necessarily reduces financial distress for banks.We have studied 49 banks among the TOP 100 European banks during the period 2006 to 2013 and performed a panel probit regression analysis on the financial distress dummy as our dependent...