Navigating the rule in Gibbs in cross-border restructurings: Alternatives to a solely English process

While debate rages on (both in England and Wales, and the other common law jurisdictions in which the rule still holds sway) as to whether it should be discarded, debtors are left navigating the longstanding rule.

Through two-step legal processes, recognition proceedings, parallel proceedings and an increased confidence in relying on the purported extra-territorial effects of foreign processes, debtors continue to successfully restructure English law-governed obligations even where the rule in Gibbs complicates matters.

In this article Senior Associate Philip Wells and Associate Ella Richards discuss and evaluate the increasingly innovative tools and tactics that debtors are using to navigate, and mitigate the impacts of, the rule in Gibbs.

This article first appeared in Volume 20, Issue 6 of International Corporate Rescue and is reprinted with the permission of Chase Cambria Publishing.