Comparative Law Discussion Group: 'Creditor Protection and the Corporation – Comparative Methodology and its Application to English and German Law'

Dr Felix Steffek will be speaking and leading discussion on "Creditor Protection and the Corporation – Comparative Methodology and its Application to English and German Law" on Friday 10 February 1-2.30pm in the Moot Court room of the Faculty.

Dr Felix Steffek is a Senior Research Fellow at the Max Planck Institute for Comparative and International Private Law in Hamburg. He is a permanent advisor to the Federal Ministry of Justice on Corporate Insolvency Law Reform and currently a Visiting Fellow at Wolfson College.

The focal point of this seminar is the question "How can you implement the idea of a functional comparison of laws?". To this end the following methods and techniques will be introduced and discussed:

• the principal-agent model
• classification of regulatory techniques
• 'interests' as a comparative tool
• development of functional yardsticks
• adding private ordering to the equation
• economic comparative case analysis, statistics and decision trees.

The introduction of each comparative method is followed by an illustrative application to creditor protection in the context of limited liability companies in England and Germany.

The topics analysed range from triggering insolvency procedures, director liability, disqualification, piercing the corporate veil, personal guarantees to vulnerable transactions in insolvency. The discussion will give ample opportunity to explore methodological issues both from a theoretical and practical point of view, their transferability to other fields of research as well as questions regarding creditor protection.

The Comparative Law Discussion Group group meet a few times a term to discuss comparative research and methodology. This year the group is expanding a little to welcome LLMs and particularly interested undergraduates in addition to the PhD students and faculty members who attend. It is not a teaching forum, its focus is on substantive research and research methodology. There are substantive presentations at points in the year, led by established academics, but for the rest of the year everyone is encouraged to present comparative work in progress and discuss it with the group. All are welcome here is no need to book. For more information or to offer a paper contact Dr Matt Dyson on mnd21@cam.ac.uk.