China Seminar | 8 March 2012

Responding to the ’97 Asian Financial Crisis:The Development of Insolvency Infrastructures in China, Japan and Hong Kong

Charles D. Booth

In the aftermath of the ’97 Asian financial crisis, attention turned to insolvency law reform throughout the region. Other responses included self-help by creditors, the use of out-of-court workouts and administrative reforms. The extent to which these responses proved successful depended in great part on existence of supporting factors and conditions (e.g., competent judges and professionals and good corporate governance) and the ability of countries to establish the necessary insolvency infrastructures. This talk will compare the approaches of China, Japan and Hong Kong and will consider the extent to which these three jurisdictions have appropriate infrastructures in place.

Professor Booth (BA, Yale University, 1981, summa cum laude; JD, Harvard Law School, 1984, cum laude) is a Professor of Law and Director of the Institute of Asian-Pacific Business Law at the William S. Richardson School of Law at the University of Hawai`i at Manoa and is a member of the Center for Chinese Studies. He taught at the Richardson School of Law from 1986-89 and taught in the Faculty of Law at the University of Hong from 1989 to 2005. He rejoined the faculty at the Richardson School of Law in January 2006. His publications include A Global View of Business Insolvency Systems (co-authored) (Martinus Nijhoff & The World Bank, 2010) and The 2006 PRC Enterprise Bankruptcy Law: The Wait is Finally Over, 20 Singapore Academy of Law Journal Special Issue (Insolvency Law) (2008).