Sefa Franken
Faculty of Law,
Center for Company Law University of Tilburg, The Netherlands,
and Visiting Scholar, UW-Madison Institute for Legal Studies

"The State-Federal Divide in Corporate Bankruptcy Law"

Tuesday, 7 February 2006
12:00 p.m.
7200 Law School (Lubar Commons)

Sponsored by the EU Center of Excellence
and
Global Legal Studies Initiative (GLSI)

Sefa Franken will discuss the question of what role EC institutions and Member States should play in the development of substantive corporate bankruptcy laws within the European Union. As opposed to the United States, there is no federal (uniform) bankruptcy law within the EU. Bankruptcy laws are state laws. Should there be a uniform bankruptcy law for Europe? Dr. Franken will discuss arguments in favor and against a uniform bankruptcy law for Europe. Arguments based on the complementarities between bankruptcy laws and financial systems lead her to conclude that the answer to this question should be negative.

Sefa Franken is a member of the Faculty of Law (Private Law Department) and researcher at the Center for Company Law at Tilburg University, the Netherlands. She received a Ph.D. in law from the European University Institute in Florence (Italy) and worked for several years as a practicing lawyer in the Netherlands. She teaches company law, insolvency law and comparative legal aspects of venture capital financing. Recent publications include "Creditor- and Debtor-Oriented Corporate Bankruptcy Regimes Revisited" (5:4 European Business Organization Law Review 2004, pp. 645-676) and "Three Principles of Transnational Corporate Bankruptcy Law: A Review" (European Law Journal, Vol. 11, No. 2, March 2005, pp. 233-258).

Feel free to bring a lunch!