Professor Stephan Madaus, my colleague from the German University of Halle Wittenberg, recently posted, what he calls ‘A Simple Guide to the Relative Priority Rule’. With a more detailed version to be published, he points at the Directive (EU) 2019/1023 on Restructuring and Insolvency, which provides for a new rule to assess the fairness of the distribution of value under… Read More »2020-01-doc4 Relative priority rule explained
For over three decades individual EU Member States have adopted specific insolvency regimes regarding natural persons, sometimes also termed ‘consumers’, ‘non-merchants’, ‘non-traders’ or ‘natural persons who are not entrepreneurs’, see Article 2(h) Restructuring Directive 2019/1023. In 1998, the Netherlands adopted as one of the last in the European Community (at that time) their debt rescheduling regime. In the second decade… Read More »2020-01-doc3 Consumer insolvency in Europe
Leiden University’s International Civil and Commercial Law (ICCL) programme is around for some ten years. It is a prime fit for a law graduate looking to pursue a challenging master’s study or for a legal practitioner understanding that law is not just what you know from your national legal box but if you wish to specialise in various private and… Read More »2020-01-doc2 Enrol for Leiden’s ICCL study
Early this year I reported the transmission on English TV of the documentary ‘Looking for Rembrandt‘. It contains a programma, with three separate films of 60 minutes, see blog/2019-03-doc13-looking-for-rembrandt. The third programme contains some lines of an interview I gave (in September 2018) regarding Rembrandt’s financial troubles. Simply because it only came to my attention just a few days ago,… Read More »2019-12-doc2 Looking for Rembrandt on Dutch TV
In June 2019, INSOL International released under the banner “Towards 2021” its Ethical Principles for Insolvency Professionals. These principles are the result of work carried out by a working group of a forward-looking task force chaired and they are intended to serve as general guidance on a set of common issues affecting insolvency professionals. Members of INSOL International are actively… Read More »2019-11-doc5 Insolvency and ethics
In August, I discussed a part of the global restructuring of the Dutch Syncreon Group. See blog/2019-08-doc1-scheme-of-arrangement-does-english-court-has-jurisdiction-re-dutch-b-v. In the subsequent blog (2019-08-doc2a), I gave some detail about the query who is to decided that someone is a ‘foreign representative’? The blog 2019-08-doc1 ended with: ‘To be continued’. Indeed, one can follow the (envisaged) global restructuing nearly virtualy. The respective scheme… Read More »2019-11-doc2 Global restructuring Syncreon Group B.V. (cont’d)
For an international insolvency research project I was invatied to Verona. The group of researchers (from Spain, Germany, Italy and the UK) found some time to visit the Capitolare Library of Verona. It’s a famous institution, dating back to the fifth century A.D. and known for the antiquity and preciousness of its manuscripts. It makes the claim of being the… Read More »2019-11-doc1 Biblioteca Capitolare Verona
Below, conclusion and recommendations, to be published as contribution to the ACURIA project, which aims to identify legal and procedural strategies, blockages and best practices in the field of undertakings’ insolvency and restructuring law that can be replicated or prevented in different legal and judicial systems, therefore enabling courts to provide a more accurate and fair response. The project is… Read More »2019-10-doc10 Improving the role of courts in quality and effectiveness
All aspects of the life and work of Rembrandt (1606-1669) have been celebrated this year. At least twenty exhibitions have been organised in the Netherlands as well as in many other museums and galleries in the world. It was a golden year for new books and TV programmes, such as ‘Looking for Rembrandt’ (BBC 4, April 2019; blog/2019-03-doc13-looking-for-rembrandt) and September/October… Read More »2019-10-doc2 R.I.P. Rembrandt – 4 October 1669
On 27 August 2019, the Dutch Minister for Legal Protection (‘Rechtsbescherming’) did send his 11th letter on progress concerning several acts for the overall recast of the Dutch Bankprty Act to Dutch Parliament. On the 5th and last page it introduces the subject ‘International insolvencies’. The following is provided, I quote: ‘An insolvency adjudicated outside the European Union is in… Read More »2019-08-doc4 Netherlands puts ‘international insolvencies’ back on legislative agenda