18th Annual International Insolvency Institute Conference

ABLI’s Asian Principles of Restructuring project was mentioned by the Honourable the Chief Justice Sundaresh Menon in his keynote address delivered at the 18th Annual Conference of the International Insolvency Institute 2018, held in New York on September 23-25, 2018.

In his keynote address, titled “The Future of Cross-Border Insolvency: Some thoughts on a framework fit for a flattening world”, the Honourable Chief Justice, among other things, said the following (footnotes omitted):

This is where the choice of instrument is important. Model laws are powerful instruments for driving legal convergence in areas where states may have significant defensive interests, and the consensus necessary for the conclusion of a treaty is hard to come by. They offer three important advantages. First, they allow progress to be made on the basis of broadly agreed principles, while leaving the specifics of implementation for each state to consider at the stage of enactment. Second, they retain their character as visions of what the law ought ultimately to look like, and in that way continue to exert a powerful normative pull over the shape of future developments, even when states do not fully adopt their provisions. Last, and critically, they promote interstitial law-making through, among other things, “judicial gap-filing” and the publication of instruments of guidance by think tanks and professional bodies. Examples of the latter include the III and Asian Business Law Institute’s “Asian Principles of Restructuring” project, which aims to formulate common principles for in and out of court restructuring for use in Asian jurisdictions, and the Judicial Insolvency Network’s Guidelines on Communications and Cooperation Between Courts in Cross-Border Insolvency Matters.

The Chief Justice’s keynote address is available from the websites for the International Insolvency Institute and the Supreme Court of Singapore.

The Asian Principles of Restructuring project is being undertaken jointly by ABLI and the III. Chief Justice Sundaresh Menon is the Chairman of ABLI’s Board of Governors.