Ferrier Hodgson in Hong Kong, China has been awarded a contract by the Asian Development Bank to conduct a project to facilitate the development of legal frameworks for the recovery and restructuring of corporate debt in the private sector of eleven Asian economies. The project is designed to provide a regional forum for government officials and policy makers concerned with insolvency law reform and administration in which to discuss common problems in insolvency law reform and administration and to explore regional and international best practice.

Mr John Lees, a Senior Partner of Ferrier Hodgson & Marfan is the Financial Analyst and Insolvency Specialist and Mr Ron Harmer, a Consultant with the Australian law firm of Blake Dawson Waldron is the Project Leader and Legal Expert.

Domestic Consultants were employed for each of the eleven economies of which comprise of Japan, South Korea, Hong Kong, China, Philippines, Thailand, Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, India, Pakistan and Taipei,China.

One of the highlights of the first stage of the project was the symposium on the local studies and a comparative report which was held at the Asian Development Bank Headquarters in Manila on 25 and 26 January 1999.

Following an evaluation of the first symposium and the conduct of the project to date, it was then decided that the scope and direction of the project would be modified. The wide spread of eleven economies, although extremely valuable for the purposes of comparison, does not enable an in-depth analysis to be made of particular problems and difficulties which are experienced by some of the economies. The first symposium clearly exposed a number of these weaknesses and problem areas in, for example, the economies of Indonesia, Thailand and Philippines.

The second stage of the project will be devoted to examining the special problems of some of the less advanced economies, specifically Indonesia, Korea, Malaysia, Philippines and Thailand. The issues of focus will be on the enforcement of security, the handling of insolvency cases by the judiciary and the training and education of those affected by the insolvency process. As a result of this change in the scope of the project, a supplementary report will be prepared by the Domestic Consultants for the five economies for discussion at a second symposium.

A second symposium was held in conjunction with the Technical Assistance Project on Secured Transactions in Manila on 25-27 October 1999.

The comparative report and the eleven local studies presented at the first symposium in January 1999 can be accessed on this website. Further amendments and enhancements will be made after the second symposium to be held in October 1999.