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2020-02-doc7 In re Strugeon – a new step of UK court in cross-border insolvency?

Last month, an interesting desicion was published of the High Court of Justice (Judge Briggs) of England and Wales. The court presents a significant development in cross-border insolvency law. The case is In Re Sturgeon Central Asia Balanced Fund Ltd (in liquidation) [2019] EWHC 1215 (Ch). The court held (among many other things) that solvent proceedings cannot be recognised under… Read More »2020-02-doc7 In re Strugeon – a new step of UK court in cross-border insolvency?

2020-02-doc2 Creating a reliable cross-border insolvency system after Brexit

Recognition and enforcement of civil judgments is an important tool in effective and reliable cross-border business. The guillotine-effect of Brexit would result in an uncertain, unpredictable, costly and undignified commercial battle without such a tool. A first sign for looking for providing certainty on which country’s courts may hear a civil or commercial cross-border dispute and that ensures that the… Read More »2020-02-doc2 Creating a reliable cross-border insolvency system after Brexit

2020-01-doc5 Finding your way to the Insolvency Law Collection

A few years after my retirement from the Leiden University in 2014, I donated the larger part of my books, reports and other data on international insolvency law to a Dutch legal foundation carrying my name (‘Stichting Bob Wessels Insolvency Law Collection’, BWILC). The statutory object of the foundation is to promote the interest and knowledge of international and comparative… Read More »2020-01-doc5 Finding your way to the Insolvency Law Collection

2020-01-doc4 Relative priority rule explained

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

2020-01-doc3 Consumer insolvency in Europe

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

2020-01-doc2 Enrol for Leiden’s ICCL study

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

2019-12-doc2 Looking for Rembrandt on Dutch TV

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

2019-11-doc5 Insolvency and ethics

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

2019-11-doc2 Global restructuring Syncreon Group B.V. (cont’d)

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)