Ms Sarah Paterson

This course is available on the LLM (extended part-time), LLM (full-time), MSc in Law and Accounting and University of Pennsylvania Law School LLM Visiting Students. This course is available with permission as an outside option to students on other programmes where regulations permit.

This course will be relevant to the following LLM specialisms: Corporate and/or Commercial Law. This course is capped at 30 students. Students must apply through Graduate Course Choice on LSE for You.

This course focuses on registered companies and is concerned with the rescue of financially distressed companies and businesses. The formal legal procedures available for rescuing companies and businesses in financial distress are analysed as are informal approaches to corporate failure. Topics include: rescuing the business and assets of a company as a going concern; restructuring and small companies; restructuring and large companies; theory of rescue and restructuring.

20 hours of seminars in the MT. 2 hours of seminars in the ST.

A variable format: some lecture-discussions, some student-paper-led discussions and some debates. Week 6 will take the form of a reading week.

One 1,500 word essay.

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).

Exam (100%, duration: 2 hours, reading time: 15 minutes) in the summer exam period.