The Annual Research Workshop on Insolvency and Bankruptcy – a two-day workshop jointly organised by the Misra Centre for Financial Markets and Economy at the Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad (IIMA) and the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Board of India (IBBI), concluded on Tuesday. The inaugural session was attended by Professor Bharat Bhasker, Director, IIMA; Dr V. Anantha Nageswaran, Chief Economic Advisor, Government of India; Mr Ravi Mital, Chairperson, IBBI, Government of India, and Mr Siddharth Sharma, Group General Counsel, Tata Sons, alongside faculty and staff members at IIMA.
Spearheaded by IIMA faculty members, Professor MP Ram Mohan and Professor Balagopal Gopalakrishnan, the two-day workshop held on March 11-12, 2024, aimed to academically explore and study the Indian insolvency ecosystem and its interaction with stakeholders, including international comparison.
At the inaugural ceremony, Professor Bharat Bhasker, Director, IIMA, welcomed the participants and said that he was hopeful that the deliberations conducted over the two days of the conference would provide opportunities for the stakeholders to collaborate, share knowledge and experiences, learn from each other, and arrive at actionable solutions that would help the industry and, in the larger context, the country’s economy.
In his inaugural address, Dr V. Anantha Nageswaran, Chief Economic Advisor, Government of India and also an alumnus of IIMA said, “This event provides the right juxtaposition of policy with academia. There is often a gaping abyss between policy formulation and academic research in India which needs to be addressed on an urgent basis. The intellectual energy of the academia should fuel the policy formulation and the practical acumen of the policymaker should inform academic research, if India has to devise an ambitious as well as an actionable strategy as we march towards Viksit Bharat in 2047.” He urged the participants to research on different areas and share findings and insights that could further strengthen the efficiency of Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code (IBC).
Some of the areas that Dr Nageswaran highlighted as areas of further research included the comparison of the efficacy of India’s IBC regime as compared to other countries, particularly with respect to the inclusion of all claims of all types of creditors in the resolution process, metrics and benchmarks that could measure the success of IBC regime; the impact of insolvency law in the choice between equity rising and debt financing for businesses as well as the choice of organisational structure; measures to deepen the market for distressed assets and direct investments into the reconstruction of such business; behavioural impacts of IBC on
corporate governance and credit flows; the impact of IBC on financial intermediaries and lastly, the lessons that IBC has for other debt recovery charts.
Mr Ravi Mital, Chairperson, IBBI, Government of India and Mr Siddharth Sharma, Group General Counsel, Tata Sons, delivered the special addresses during the inaugural session of the conference.
Mr Ravi Mital, Chairperson, IBBI spoke about the need for industry-academia collaboration to address insolvency challenges and shared that IBBI is actively initiating such collaborations to initiate healthy dialogues between different stakeholders. He shared that the deliberations that were held in the last two conferences played a pivotal role in formulation of some of the regulations rolled out by IBBI. In this context, he asked the audience comprising researchers and experts from the insolvency landscape to identify the innovations that can be adapted for the insolvency landscape to make the regime more efficient and timelier.
As an industry representative, Mr Siddharth Sharma, Group General Counsel, Tata Sons, touched upon the challenges that companies deal with when faced with insolvency and bankruptcy related issues. He underlined the need for creating frameworks around group insolvency – a much debated area that needed policy intervention, importance of calibration of approach and the need for facilitating a ‘clean slate’ principle for entities post resolution.
Over the course of two days, the conference hosted paper presentations on insolvency issues across sectors. The first day of the conference also witnessed a panel discussion on ‘Ecosystem for Insolvency Research’.