
Max Planck Lecture Series
on Sovereign Debt
Wednesday, 30 November 2016, 16:00
“Proposals for Reform of Sovereign Debt Restructuring: The Contractual Approach”
Various proposals have been put forward to reform the current sovereign debt restructuring process. While incomplete sovereign debt contracts risk making the restructuring process costly and unpredictable, Collective Action Clauses (CACs) are presented as a practical way to bind creditors to a well-defined restructuring process and prevent collective action litigation. This market-oriented approach rests on the idea that improving sovereign debt contracts is the best way to allow a more timely and orderly process without interfering with creditors’ rights. The lecture brings a critical perspective on the propositions that have been made to reform the restructuring process through a contractual approach.
Lecturer:
Mr. Philip R. Wood CBE (Allen & Overy)

Philip R Wood CBE, QC (Hon), BA (Cape Town), MA (Oxon), LLD (Lund, Hon)
- Head of Allen & Overy Global Law Intelligence Unit
- Special Global Counsel at Allen & Overy
- Visiting Professor in International Financial Law, University of Oxford
- Yorke Distinguished Visiting Fellow, University of Cambridge
- Visiting Professor, Queen Mary College, University of London
Philip Wood is one of the world's leading experts in comparative and cross-border financial law and an experienced practitioner. He works full-time for Allen & Overy in the firm's London office. He has written around 19 books, including nine volumes in the series Law and Practice of International Finance published in 2007/8. The latest book is for the general reader called The fall of the priests and the rise of the lawyers.
He pioneered a method of measuring financial law according to key indicators and is particularly well-known for his colour-coded global law maps. He has developed a methodology for legal risk ratings of the jurisdictions of the world with regard to both their written law and the application of the law.
He completed the London Marathon in 2005, and the Berlin Marathon in 2011 (at age 69) and the Paris Marathon in 2014. He climbed Mount Kilimanjaro in 2009.
He was born in Livingstone, Zambia and is married with four children.
Philip was awarded a CBE in the Queen's New Year honours list in 2015 for services to English and Financial Law.
Discussant:
Prof. Christoph G. Paulus (Humboldt University of Berlin)

Prof. Christoph G. Paulus, Professor for Civil Law, Procedural Law, Insolvency Law and ancient Legal History at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin since 1994. He completed his studies and his legal clerkship in Munich where he also obtained his PhD (1981) and qualified as professor (1991). He has taught as a guest professor at numerous universities including Università Commerciale Luigi "Bocconi", Milan, Italy; University of Sydney, Australia; Lomonosov University, Moscow, Russia and Université Panthéon-Assas (Paris II), France. Furthermore, he has been a consultant to the IMF, the World Bank and UNCITRAL.
To download the poster of the event, please click here.
For a picture gallery of the lecture, please click here.
Venue:
Max Planck Institute Luxembourg
Conference room, 4th floor
4, rue Alphonse Weicker
L-2721 Luxembourg
Contact person:
Sabrina Logrillo; (+352) 269488 926; events@mpi.lu