The primary purpose for the doctrine of separate legal personality is to encourage entrepreneurship, by shifting the risks of business failure away from entrepreneurs to creditors and other risk bearers. Unfortunately this doctrine is subject to abuse by corporate controllers, which prompted the...

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...

The UK Cross-Border Insolvency Regulations 2006 (CBIR) permits discretionary relief in the form of applying foreign insolvency law. There is no convincing common-law objection to the application of foreign law.The ability to apply foreign law pursuant to the CBIR is consistent with Chapter 15 of...

Establishing (e.g., perfecting) and enforcing a lien presents technical pitfalls and practical problems with which practitioners and courts are often unfamiliar or uncomfortable. After all, the law of liens requires an understanding of many different areas of the law, including the law of...

The fundamental question in any corporate bankruptcy case is whether the bankrupt firm should be liquidated or continued (and how). This paper provides a generic model as to how this question can be addressed by the bankruptcy judge who does not know at the outset whether the management of the...

We offer an analytical framework for studying "pre-emptive" debt exchanges. Countries can tailor a sovereign bankruptcy framework by choosing provisions (or "haircuts") ex ante, but must contend with the market discipline of holdout litigation ex post. Secondary markets play a role in shaping...

In this article, we use the Greek insolvency law and its present status as a role model for the demonstration of the central role insolvency law generally plays within a given economy. The Greek example amplifies in a particular instructive way the interrelationship between the functionality of...

The focus of this article is on cross-border insolvency (CBI) cases, particularly those across the border of Hong Kong and China (the Hong Kong-China CBI cases). CBI cases can initiate from the filing of a petition by a foreign party (eg the creditors of the debtor company in Hong Kong) against...