Some businesses operate in a naturally risky environment where a major crisis event is a real possible consequence of everyday operations. What do you do when something literally blows up?

In the context of the scenario posed for the first day of the conference, this panel considered some of the obligations of the board and the officers of a near insolvent company in managing financial, regulatory, and environmental risks.

Litigation funding can form a useful part of the arsenal of an insolvency practitioner when attempting to maximise the return to creditors. Yet funders can be met with suspicion by creditors and courts alike, depending on the country in which you pursue your litigation.

This break out session sought to highlight key issues for funders and borrowers, and regional differences in how litigation funding is perceived and applied.

Billed as INSOL’s “most popular session”, the plenary session Hot Topics – Avoid Being Burnt! provided a brief overview of developments in the insolvency landscape. The session panel was chaired by Jay A. Carfagnini (Goodmans LLP) with panelists the Honourable Justice Paul Heath of the High Court of New Zealand, Gabriel Moss QC, Gaurav Malhorta (Ernst & Young), and Jason Karas (Lipman Karas).

The panel discussed the following points:

We continue our roundup of events concerning the marine industry in 2016, as well as looking forward to 2017, by looking at how the collapse of Hanjin affected the world of shipping.

The watchword for 2016 in much of the world was "upheaval." Two unanticipated events dominated the political, business, and financial headlines of 2016, at least in Europe and the Americas: the Brexit referendum result and the election of Donald J .Trump as the 45th President of the United States. The refugee crisis, the commodities meltdown, Brazil’s economic collapse, China’s growing pains, Russian belligerency and alleged cyber-meddling in the U.S. election, the war on terrorism, and the beginning of the end of the bloody Syrian civil war seemed to pale by comparison.

Although political and economic uncertainties tempered corporate activity somewhat in 2016, the trends and fundamentals that have the potential to drive transactions remain in place in 2017.

Capital Markets

The last decade has exposed the bankruptcy courts across the globe to a large volume of international work, and with that experience in mind, the Judicial Insolvency Network (JIN) held its inaugural meeting in Singapore in late 2016. Its intent was to formulate a set of guidelines (theGuidelines) that would promote cooperation between Courts. Sitting alongside common law and legislative cross-border provisions, the Guidelines are a practical code to enhance some of the most successful cross-border initiatives of recent years.

Am 31. August 2016 hatte die weltweit siebtgrösste Container-Liner Reederei, Hanjin Shipping Co.Ltd. (nachfolgend Hanjin), in Korea Gläubigerschutz beantragt. Die Hoffnungen, dem koreanischen Gericht einen Sanierungsplan vorlegen zu können, haben sich in der Folge nicht ganz unerwartet rasch zerschlagen. Der Seoul Center District Court hat am 2. Februar 2017 entschieden, am 17. Februar 2017 über Hanjin Shipping Co.Ltd definitiv den Konkurs zu eröffnen[1].

Since the bankruptcy of Hanjin Shipping Co. Ltd., so many articles have been written about how it happened, why it happened, and what can be learned from this tragedy. When Hanjin Shipping, once the 7th largest container carrier in the world and the 4th largest container carriers in the transpacific (Asia – US & Canada) trade, filed for bankruptcy, few believed that a “too big to fail” organization like Hanjin would not be given a government bail-out. So, naturally, no one really appreciated the kind of disruption and losses that would subsequently affect the global supply chain.

Globalization is a hot topic these days. It should come as no surprise, then, that the challenges that come with having a global enterprise in financial distress can be complex. The panelists at the INSOL breakout session, Group next (or not): continuing challenges in the treatment of enterprise groups in insolvency, explored what happens when a global organization with businesses in multiple jurisdictions around the world tries to implement a cohesive and coordinated restructuring.