Reveals the unwritten and hitherto inaccessible principles that govern the restructuring of large corporations in Chapter 11.

Corporate Reorganisation Law argues that corporate reorganisation law is seen by market participants as a tool they can mobilise and adapt according to practices, logics, and identities in the of the financial and non-financial corporate markets. Thus changes in market practice, in the participants in the process, or in how the participants view their objectives, can significantly change the ways in which corporate reorganisation law is mobilised and adapted, even if the law has not undergone any reform. This book argues that corporate reorganisation law cannot be evaluated using a theoretical model in isolation from the wider institutional context in which corporate reorganisation law is mobilised and adapted by the participants to the process. In establishing the new methodology, the book undertakes a detailed analysis of six key changes in market practice, logic and identities in the financial and non-financial corporate fields. A comparative US/UK approach is adopted in analysing both the process of institutional change and the implications for law. This provides a fascinating lens through which to see how different institutional environments in the financial and non-financial markets in different jurisdictions are drawing together, and interacting with very different legal systems which were adapted to the distinct, original institutional environments in which they were developed. From this analysis important lessons for legal harmonisation efforts in Europe and in non-European jurisdictions are drawn out. The work emphasises the need to look at formal legal rules in combination with other, non-legal and legal institutions and argues that current reform debates in both the US and UK have suffered because scholars, practitioners, and policy makers have not started their evaluation of the case for reform by placing corporate reorganisation law in this wider institutional context. The book aims to fill this gap, and to provide a methodological approach for the future.

Presents in-depth, comparative analyses of German, UK and US company laws illustrated by leading cases, with German cases in English translation.

Bankruptcy in America, in stark contrast to its status in most other countries, typically signifies not a debtor's last gasp but an opportunity to catch one's breath and recoup. Why has the nation's legal system evolved to allow both corporate and individual debtors greater control over their fate than imaginable elsewhere? Masterfully probing the political dynamics behind this question, David Skeel here provides the first complete account of the remarkable journey American bankruptcy law has taken from its beginnings in 1800, when Congress lifted the country's first bankruptcy code right out of English law, to the present day. Skeel shows that the confluence of three forces that emerged over many years--an organized creditor lobby, pro-debtor ideological currents, and an increasingly powerful bankruptcy bar--explains the distinctive contours of American bankruptcy law. Their interplay, he argues in clear, inviting prose, has seen efforts to legislate bankruptcy become a compelling battle royale between bankers and lawyers--one in which the bankers recently seem to have gained the upper hand. Skeel demonstrates, for example, that a fiercely divided bankruptcy commission and the 1994 Republican takeover of Congress have yielded the recent, ideologically charged battles over consumer bankruptcy. The uniqueness of American bankruptcy has often been noted, but it has never been explained. As different as twenty-first century America is from the horse-and-buggy era origins of our bankruptcy laws, Skeel shows that the same political factors continue to shape our unique response to financial distress.