Developments in Cross-Border Insolvency Practice in the United Kingdom

Abstract

International insolvency has aroused a great deal of interest in recent years, owing to the spectacular rise in cases of the collapse of banks and multinational companies situated in a variety of jurisdictions. There has been considerable progress in England and Wales from the traditional common law methods of asserting jurisdiction and their statutory equivalents, which lead inevitably to the winding up of the company, towards procedures for reciprocal assistance, which allow domestic procedures to be extended to the foreign company. This often has the effect of allowing the company to attempt to consolidate its economic future through the judicious use of those rescue regimes available in domestic law. The history in the United Kingdom for cooperation has been good, with many of the cases leading the way in developing the principle that domestic courts should allow the most efficient result to obtain for the benefit of creditors and other participants in the process as a whole. Often, this requires domestic courts to extend jurisdiction and the rules in the United Kingdom are framed widely, so as to allow for very wide bases for asserting jurisdiction, where there is a conceivable benefit from doing so.