Lynette Janssen wins International Insolvency Institute’s 2017 Prize
Lynette Janssen, PhD candidate at the Hazelhoff Centre for Financial Law, has been awarded the Bronze Medal in the competition for the International Insolvency Institute’s 2017 Prize in International Insolvency Studies.
Lynette’s winning article is titled ‘Bail-in from an insolvency law perspective’.
In addition to the prize, Lynette is invited to attend the International Insolvency Institute’s annual conference, which this year is being held in London in June 2017, and will be nominated to Class VI of the III NextGen Leadership Program which will convene during the conference in London.
In the last ten years, billions of euros of taxpayers’ money have been spent in the European Union to avoid failures of banks. New rules that have recently been enacted at European Union level create a harmonised bank resolution framework to safeguard failing banks’ critical functions while the provision of public financial support is avoided as much as possible. Prevailing view in policy and academic discussions at the moment is that differences that currently exist between Member States’ insolvency laws as well as between these laws and the bank resolution rules create legal uncertainty and undermine the effectiveness of resolution authorities’ resolution actions. Yet, at the same time doubts exist whether harmonisation of substantive insolvency law in the European Union is feasible.
Using the legal theory of coherence in a legal system, the article examines to what extent an important part of the bank resolution framework is currently already aligned with and how it is embedded into more general areas of Dutch private law. It shows that with regard to specific aspects of the interaction between the resolution rules and national private law amendment or clarification is needed to avoid uncertainties about the application of the resolution rules. The analysis is relevant for other Member States than the Netherlands as well. Moreover, the conclusions can serve as a basis for projects that aim at further harmonisation and development of the bank resolution framework in the European Union and discuss in which way this can best be achieved.