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Implementing An Insolvency Framework For Micro And Small Firms, Aurelio Gurrea-Martinez

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

Micro-, small-, and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs) represent the vast majority of businesses in most countries around the world. Despite the economic relevance of these firms, most insolvency jurisdictions do not provide adequate responses to MSMEs. Moreover, with a few exceptions, the academic literature on insolvency law has not traditionally focused on the treatment of MSMEs in insolvency. This article seeks to contribute to the debate by exploring the primary features and problems of MSMEs in insolvency as well as the weaknesses of the ordinary insolvency framework to deal with MSMEs. It also provides a general overview of the primary reforms …

Enhancing Rescue In Chapter 11: Lessons From Reform Efforts In The United Kingdom, Robert J. Landry Iii

Research, Publications & Creative Work

This is a dynamic time for insolvency law. Many jurisdictions have or are considering reforms to their insolvency regimes. The U.K. has proposed a new standalone restructuring mechanism that incorporates many attributes of Chapter 11, including a cross-class cram down and the absolute priority rule. A distinctive feature of the U.K proposal is the infusion of judicial discretion permitting courts to deviate from the absolute priority rule. This discretion is not permitted in the U.S. This judicial discretion addresses a key problem with the application of the absolute priority rule in the U.S. – it serves as an impediment to …

Corporate Governance And The Insolvency Risk Of Financial Institutions, Searat Ali, Jamshed Iqbal

Faculty of Business - Papers (Archive)

We investigate whether corporate governance is related to insolvency risk of financial institutions. Using a large sample of U.S. financial institutions over the 2005-2010 period, we find that corporate governance is positively related with insolvency risk of financial institutions as proxied by Merton's distance to default measure and credit default swap spread. We also find that "better" corporate governance increased insolvency risk relatively more for larger financial institutions and during the period of the global financial crisis. Our findings suggest that too-big-to fail and deposit insurance policies encourage excessive risk taking by financial institutions.

The Cape Town Convention’S Improbable-But-Possible Progeny Part Two: Bilateral Investment Treaty-Like Enforcement Mechanism, Charles W. Mooney Jr.

All Faculty Scholarship

This Essay is Part Two of a two-part essay series that outlines and evaluates two possible future international instruments. Each instrument draws substantial inspiration from the Cape Town Convention and its Aircraft Protocol (together, the “Convention”). The Convention governs the secured financing and leasing of large commercial aircraft, aircraft engines, and helicopters. It entered into force in 2006. It has been adopted by sixty-six Contracting States (fifty-eight of which have adopted the Aircraft Protocol), including the U.S., China, the E.U., India, Ireland, Luxembourg, Russia, and South Africa.

This Part of the Essay explores whether an investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) feature …

Business Failure Prediction Using Decision Trees, Adrian Gepp, Kuldeep Kumar, Sukanto Bhattacharya

Kuldeep Kumar

Accurate business failure prediction models would be extremely valuable to many industry sectors, particularly financial investment and lending. The potential value of such models is emphasised by the extremely costly failure of high-profile companies in the recent past. Consequently, a significant interest has been generated in business failure prediction within academia as well as in the finance industry. Statistical business failure prediction models attempt to predict the failure or success of a business. Discriminant and logit analyses have traditionally been the most popular approaches, but there are also a range of promising non-parametric techniques that can alternatively be applied. In …

Business Failure Prediction Using Decision Trees, Adrian Gepp, Kumar Kuldeep, Sukanto Bhattacharya

Adrian Gepp

Accurate business failure prediction models would be extremely valuable to many industry sectors, particularly financial investment and lending. The potential value of such models is emphasised by the extremely costly failure of high-profile companies in the recent past. Consequently, a significant interest has been generated in business failure prediction within academia as well as in the finance industry. Statistical business failure prediction models attempt to predict the failure or success of a business. Discriminant and logit analyses have traditionally been the most popular approaches, but there are also a range of promising non-parametric techniques that can alternatively be applied. In …

An Exploratory Study Of The Company Reorganisation Decision In Voluntary Administration, James Routledge, David Gadenne

James Routledge

A primary purpose of the voluntary administration legislation is to provide a flexible procedure by which a company can attempt to reorganise its affairs and continue trading. Informed decision-making regarding which companies should attempt reorganisation is critical to the efficient operation of company rescue legislation. This paper explores decision-making associated with the voluntary administration process, with a focus on the relevance of financial information to the reorganisation decision. Statistical models are developed to provide some insight into the reorganisation decision and the problem of identifying suitable (successful) reorganisation candidates from a pool of distressed companies. Additionally, insolvency experts’ decisions regarding …

The Decision To Enter Voluntary Administration: Timely Strategy Or Last Resort?, James Routledge

James Routledge

One of the options available to directors of financially distressed companies is to place their company into voluntary administration (VA). The decision to enter VA should enhance corporate governance because it allows for informed decision-making about a company's future, and ensures that administration of a company's affairs proceeds in an orderly manner. Once in VA, a company has a short 'breathing space' during which it can develop a strategy to address its insolvency. The strategic options available will be significantly affected by past performance and current financial position. If the company's position has deteriorated significantly, the VA process will merely …

Bankruptcy Or Bailouts?, Kenneth M. Ayotte, David A. Skeel Jr.

All Faculty Scholarship

The usual reaction if one mentions bankruptcy as a mechanism for addressing a financial institution’s default is incredulity. Those who favor the rescue of troubled financial institutions, and even those who prefer that their assets be promptly sold to a healthier institution, treat bankruptcy as anathema. Everyone seems to agree that nothing good can come from bankruptcy. Indeed, the Chapter 11 filing by Lehman Brothers has been singled out by many the primary cause of the severe economic and financial contraction that followed, and proof that bankruptcy is disorderly and ineffective. As a result, ad-hoc rescue lending to avoid bankruptcy …

Governance In The Ruins, David A. Skeel Jr.

All Faculty Scholarship

What gets an economy up and running after a catastrophic war or a period of oppressive rule? While there are nearly as many answers to these questions as experts, one of the most prominent for the past century has been law. Nearly every page of Law and Capitalism, a remarkable new book by Curtis Milhaupt and Katharina Pistor, stands in implicit or explicit dissent from the prevailing view. Milhaupt and Pistor’s countermodel begins a matrix consisting of two axes. The first contrasts a purely protective regime on one end, with a pervasively “coordinative” approach on the other. The second axis …

The Efficacy Of Auditors' Going-Concern Opinions Compared With A Temporal And An Atemporal Bankruptcy Risk Model: Analysing Us Trade And Service Industry Failures 1974-1988, Carolyn Windsor, P Cybinski

Carolyn Windsor

Conflicting results have emerged from several past studies as to whether bankruptcy prediction models are able to forecast corporate failure more accurately than auditors’ going-concern opinions. Nevertheless, the last decade has seen improved modelling of the path-to-failure of financially distressed firms over earlier static models of bankruptcy. In the light of the current crisis facing the auditing profession, this study evaluates the efficacy of auditors’ going-concern opinions in comparison to two bankruptcy prediction models. Bankrupt firms in the U.S. service and trade industry sectors were used to compare model predictions against the auditors’ going-concern opinion for two years prior to …