Yannis Manuelides Paper on the Limits of the "Local Law Advantage" in Eurozone Sovereign Bonds

Sovereign debt guru and Allen & Overy partner, Yannis Manuelides has a new paper (here) out on the “local law advantage” in Euro area sovereign bonds.  This paper, along with Mark Weidemaier’s paper from the beginning of the summer (here – and a prior creditslips discussion about it here), helps shed light the thorny question of which European local-law sovereign bonds should be valued more by investors: Ones with CACs or ones without them.  Given that there are billions of euros worth of these bonds with and without CACs being traded every day, one might have thought that there would be clear answers to these questions from the issuing authorities themselves.  There are not.  Further, some of the folks at the various government debt offices take the bizarre (to me) view that answering this question might somehow scare the market.

St. Petersburg Int'l Legal Forum & Insolvency Forum

I've just returned from a really fantastic conference, the entire recorded proceedings of which are available online and might be of interest to Credit Slips readers. The St. Petersburg International Legal Forum takes place annually in the marvelous city of St. Petersburg, Russia, and nestled within the broader forum is a two-day International Insolvency Forum. The numerous panels for this forum were recorded, both in English with Russian simultaneous translation and in Russian with simultaneous English translation--it was a magnificently well-organized undertaking. The insolvency forum was held on Thursday and Friday (May 16 and 17) in the main auditorium, with an agenda including panels on implementation of a rescue culture in business reorganization (chaired by INSOL Europe), digital technology in insolvency proceedings, enforcement proceedings and involuntary bankruptcy petitions (which included a great introduction to Israel's new personal insolvency procedure by the Official Receiver of Israel, the always impressive David Hahn), consumer insolvency (chaired by a member of the State Duma, and including presentations by a Supreme Court justice and other impressive Russian and foreign experts--this was the panel on which I presented on the sticky issue of financing low-value personal insolvency cases), and asset tracing.

The hosts and attendees of the forum were very grateful for and receptive to the exchange of ideas and opinions from non-Russian experts, and they seem eager to recruit more of this kind of exchange in the coming years. If you're interested in participating and/or presenting in May of next year, please let me know, and I'll coordinate and pass on the info to the organizers. St. Petersburg is an absolutely gorgeous place, and it is a very European-ized Russian city (as was Peter the Great's goal in founding the new capital there in the early 1700s). It has changed dramatically since I lived and studied there in college in the early 1990s; today, it is safe, clean, and easy to navigate, there is English on all the signs, most shop and restaurant employees speak English, and the restaurant scene is accessible, varied, and delicious, to say nothing of the world-class cultural opportunities.  Consider it!