Venture debt, or loans to rapid-growth start-ups, is a puzzle. How are start-ups with no track records, positive cash flows, tangible collateral, or personal guarantees from entrepreneurs able to attract billions of dollars in loans each year? And why do start-ups take on debt rather than rely...

Business transactions sometimes do not always go as planned. Many business owners at a point in time find themselves in bad debt and deep financial crisis that becomes impossible to remedy.Once an individual or business outfit runs into bad debt, which the creditor does not want to forfeit or...

This paper discusses some of the legal aspects of Collective Action Clauses (CACs) in the context of the Eurozone and then approaches the broader economic issue of why it may be useful to have more efficient CACs, such as single-limb CACs, and when and in what circumstances it may be appropriate...

In the last three decades, only developing countries dealt with the shadow of debt defaults but the recent European sovereign debt crises showed that even an high-income developed country might be locus of primary concern for sovereign debt insolvency. To deal with the Sovereign Debt...

The sovereign debt restructuring regime looks like it is coming apart. Changing patterns of capital flows, old creditors' weakening commitment to past practices, and other stakeholders' inability to take over, or coalesce behind a viable alternative, have challenged the regime from the moment it...

The pari passu clause in sovereign bond contracts has spawned an improbably huge academic literature and a fast-growing jurisprudence, culminating in recent U.S. federal court decisions, which used the clause to block payments on nearly $30 billion in Argentinian debt. The academic literature,...

Scholars generally assess the usefulness of standard-form securities contracts from the perspective of the firms that use them. But these firm-centric accounts overlook the cumulative impact of standardization on markets. Where the market in question is critical to the financial system, this...

The importance of regimes containing an effective mechanism to enable the rescue of distressed but viable businesses is increasingly recognised. In the UK the importance of developing a rescue culture has been appreciated for some time and a number of different mechanisms exist which can be used...

Debt restructuring procedures aim to achieve a compromise between the needs of the debtor and its creditors. It is common for business to be conducted using group structures with related parties potentially exposing themselves to broad claims upon the debtor’s insolvency, usually in a false...

The Commonwealth of Puerto Rico has been the center of attention as it faces mounting pressure from its unsustainable debt obligations. Puerto Rico’s current fiscal predicament is further complicated by the fact that it lacks a contractual mechanism that would help it obtain debt relief, if it...