I am pleased to be presenting at the INSOL Academics’ Group Colloquium in Sydney, being held on 18 and 19 March 2017. Its program is here. The colloquium is chaired by Professor Rosalind Mason, of Queensland University of Technology, QUT.
My paper*asks:
- whether or how an Australian liquidator conducting investigations and proceedings overseas as a “foreign representative” under authority of the UNCITRAL Model Law is regulated – by the Australian courts, regulators and professional bodies ‘back home’; and, by the courts and regulators of that overseas jurisdiction; and
- whether or how a foreign representative conducting proceedings and investigations in Australia is likewise regulated, by the Australian courts and regulators, and by the ‘home’ courts and regulators of the overseas jurisdiction.
Decisions in the UK, New Zealand and the US raise the question without needing to resolve it. The hearing of a case in Australia that may need to address the issue is pending.
The extraterritorial reach under the Insolvency Law Reform Act 2016 should be noted, relevant to the courts, regulators and professional bodies. But neither ASIC nor AFSA, nor, it seems the professional bodies, exercise any extraterritorial regulation.
My options for reform include clear legislative authority, as in the UK; changes to court rules and practice guidance; insolvency agreements; court to court agreements; the role of a monitor or information officer found in Canadian cross-border insolvency law; and an international regulatory code.
If anyone knows of instances or court decisions concerning this question, or wants to know more, please let me know.
Other topics at the INSOL Academics Colloquium
The colloquium covers a range of other issues on practitioner regulation, including trans-Tasman regulation; along with papers on insolvency developments in China, Japan, Singapore, China, New Zealand and South Africa; the use of technology in insolvency practice; business rescue in the UK, and the EU; directors’ duties in ‘deepening insolvency’; consumer bankruptcy reform; and ipso facto clauses.
Michael Murray QUT Law
* ‘The regulation of foreign representatives under the Model Law’, 12.35pm Sunday 17 March 2017, INSOL Academics.
Photo: from Ferrier Hodgson Sydney.
