Ms Sarah Paterson NAB6.06

This course is available on the Executive LLM. This course is not available as an outside option.

Available to Executive LLM students only. This course will be offered on the Executive LLM during the four year degree period. The Department of Law will not offer all Executive LLM courses every year, although some of the more popular courses may be offered in each year, or more than once each year. Please note that whilst it is the Department of Law's intention to offer all Executive LLM courses, its ability to do so will depend on the availability of the staff member in question. For more information please refer to the Department of Law website.

This course is concerned with the principles and policies underlying the legal treatment of insolvency and corporate rescue. The course considers how the nature of the problems raised by insolvency varies and is dependent on the legal identity of the insolvent (for example, whether the insolvent is a company with limited liability or an individual running a business) and the course examines the legal responses to these problems. The formal legal procedures available for dealing with companies in distress are analysed as are informal approaches to corporate failure. Topics include: Introduction: Aims and Objectives. Outline of insolvency procedures. The administration of insolvency processes: insolvency practitioners, the Insolvency Service and turnaround professionals. Causes of corporate failure/Who goes bankrupt? Corporate Rescue Procedures: informal rescues. Corporate Rescue Procedures: formal procedures. Business rescues - comparative approaches: USA, Chapter 11.

24-26 hours of contact time.

All students are expected to produce one 2,000 word formative essay during the course.

A full Reading List will be distributed during the course. The recommended text is V. Finch, Corporate Insolvency Law: Perspectives and Principles (Cambridge University Press, 2009) (2nd edition). Wider background reading will include some comparative law reform and other material including: The Report of the Review Committee on Insolvency Law and Practice (Cork Report) (Cmnd 8558, 1982); T H Jackson, The Logic and Limits of Bankruptcy Law, Harvard (1986).

Either a take-home examination or 8,000 word assessed essay (100%).