Restructuring in the Covid-19 era: What is the cost of missed opportunity?

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The coronavirus pandemic has triggered a serious economic crisis in developed and emerging markets alike and severely impacted businesses across the world. What is the cost if countries fail to use this crisis as an opportunity to introduce much needed reforms?

Given the external economic shocks triggered by the pandemic on demand and prices, should we expect definitive changes in demographic structures and economic geographies? Will the pandemic lead to a wave of insolvencies that could break up valuable long-standing economic relationships? What will be the effect on entrepreneurs, women, the youth and the vulnerable in society?

Our virtual discussion will address legal, economic and social perspectives relating to the issue of business failure and why regulators should be seizing the opportunity of the crisis to introduce long-lasting reforms that will benefit businesses, the wider economy and society as a whole.

Please join us for a virtual discussion featuring:

Beata Javorcik, EBRD's Chief Economist, responsible for advising the President of the Bank on economic issues of strategic or operational relevance to the EBRD regions.
Professor Ignacio Tirado, Secretary General of UNIDROIT.
Barbara Rambousek,Director, Gender & Economic Inclusion, who leads the EBRD's projects and policy programmes on economic inclusion.
Ugo Panizza, Professor of International Economics at the Graduate Institute of Geneva, Director of the International Centre for Monetary and Banking Studies (ICMB) and Vice President and Fellow of CEPR.

Our webinar will be moderated by: Rodrigo Olivares-Caminal, professor in Banking and Finance Law at the Centre for Commercial Law Studies (CCLS) at Queen Mary University of London.

This event is the third webinar of a series of discussions hosted by the EBRD's Legal Transition Team in connection with the launch of a new project by the EBRD to assess the extensiveness and effectiveness of business reorganisation frameworks across all 38 economies where we invest.

For further details, please see ebrd-restructuring.com

If you have any queries or would like to submit questions in advance, please contact belld@ebrd.com

Speakers

Catherine Bridge Zoller

Senior Counsel, Legal Transition Team at EBRD

Beata Javorcik

EBRD’s Chief Economist, responsible for advising the President of the Bank on economic issues of strategic or operational relevance to the EBRD regions at EBRD

Rodrigo Olivares-Caminal

Professor in Banking and Finance Law at the Centre for Commercial Law Studies (CCLS) at Queen Mary University of London.

Ugo Panizza

Professor of International Economics at the Graduate Institute of Geneva, Director of the International Centre for Monetary and Banking Studies (ICMB) and Vice President and Fellow of CEPR.

Barbara Rambousek

Director, Gender & Economic Inclusion, who leads the EBRD’s projects and policy programmes on economic inclusion of EBRD

Professor Ignacio Tirado

Secretary General at UNIDROIT

Catherine Bridge Zoller is a Senior Counsel for restructuring and insolvency in the EBRD's Legal Transition Team, which aims to promote an investor-friendly, transparent and predictable legal environment in the EBRD countries of operations. Since joining the Bank in 2012, Catherine has led a number of EBRD projects spanning from insolvency law reform to institutional and regulatory capacity building. She has also helped develop strategies for non-performing loan resolution in Central, Eastern and South-Eastern Europe (CESEE) both as part of the Vienna Initiative 2 platform and outside the CEE in countries such as Mongolia, Turkey and Ukraine.

Prior to joining the Bank, Catherine was a senior associate in the Restructuring and Insolvency department of Clifford Chance LLP and worked in the firm's London, Milan and Munich offices and was seconded to Dubai, where she contributed to reform of the United Arab Emirates Bankruptcy Law.

A UK and Canadian national, Catherine is a qualified solicitor in England & Wales and a graduate of Oxford University. She is fluent in French, German and Italian.

Beata Javorcik is Chief Economist of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) in London. She is on leave from the University of Oxford, where she is the first woman to hold a Statutory Professorship in Economics. She is also a Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford, a member of the Royal Economic Society’s Executive Committee and a Director of the International Trade Programme at the Centre for Economic Policy Research in London. Before taking up her position at Oxford, she worked at the World Bank in Washington DC, where she focused on research, lending operations and policy advice. She holds a Ph.D. in Economics from Yale and a B.A. in Economics (Summa cum Laude) from the University of Rochester.

Professor in Banking and Finance Law at the Centre for Commercial Law Studies (CCLS) at Queen Mary University of London. Prior to joining CCLS, he was a Senior Lecturer in Financial law and the Academic Director at the Centre for Financial and Management Studies (SOAS) University of London, and the School of Law, University of Warwick. He taught undergraduate and postgraduate courses in various schools of law and business schools in the UK, Spain, Greece, France and Argentina as well as in professional training courses in Africa, Asia, and Europe.
He has acted as a Sovereign Debt Expert for the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), Senior Insolvency Expert for the World Bank/IFC and as a consultant to several multilateral institutions in Washington DC and Europe, Central Banks and Sovereign States and has worked on several international transactions with law firms.
He specialises in international finance and insolvency law. He is the author/editor of several books and has extensively published in peer-reviewed journals. He sits in the editorial/advisory board of several law journals in the UK and US and is a member of national and international institutions and associations specialised in comparative commercial and insolence law.

Professor of Economics and Pictet Chair in Finance and Development at the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies. He is also the Director of the International Center for Monetary and Banking Studies (ICMB), Editor in Chief of International Development Policy and deputy director of the Center for Finance and Development. He is a Vice President and Fellow of CEPR, and Fellow of the Fondazione Einaudi. Before joining the Graduate Institute, he was Chief of the Debt and Finance Analysis Unit at the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) and a Senior Economist at the Inter-American Development Bank. He also worked at the World Bank and taught at the American University of Beirut and the University of Torino. Ugo holds an undergraduate degree from the University of Torino and a Ph. D. in Economics from the Johns Hopkins University (Baltimore).

Barbara Rambousek is EBRD’s Director for Gender and Economic Inclusion. She leads its work on gender equality and economic inclusion that creates access to economic opportunity for women, youth and refugees through private sector investments and policy dialogue.

Barbara has 20 years leadership experience in the design and delivery of multi-sectoral inclusion, gender and development programmes in eastern Europe, the Middle East, Asia and the UK. She was previously Head of Regeneration and Corporate Strategy at the London Development Agency, where she led major urban regeneration programmes and the formulation of London’s 20 year Economic Development Strategy.

She holds an MBA from Cass Business School in London and MSc degrees from the London School of Economics and the University of Vienna.

Professor Ignacio Tirado was appointed Secretary-General of UNIDROIT by the Governing Council at its 97th session, and officially took office on 27 August 2018.
A national Spain, Professor Tirado (Commercial, Corporate and Insolvency Law, Universidad Autonoma of Madrid, Spain) holds a PhD from the Universities of Bologna and Autonoma de Mardid and an LLM from the University of London.
Professor Tirado has been a Senior Legal Consultant at the World Bank’s Legal Vice-Presidency and Financial Sector Practice for nine years, having also consulted for the IMF on insolvency related matter as well as for Asian Development Bank on commercial legal reform. Amongst other accolades to his professional experience, Professor Tirado is a founding member of the European Banking Institute, Director an International Fellow of the American College of Bankruptcy and Former Director of the International Insolvency Institute.

European Bank for Reconstruction and Development

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