Who Is the Debtor? Debtor-Friendliness, Control, and Trusted Rescue
Location:
Room 11.18,
40 George Square
Date/time
Wed 1 April 2026
17:00 - 19:00
Venue change: The event will now take place in Room 11.18, 40 George Square.
About the event
Debtor-friendly insolvency and restructuring law is often presented as a success story. It promises early intervention, business rescue, entrepreneurial rehabilitation, and superior outcomes for creditors. But the picture is incomplete. Debtor-friendliness draws much of its normative appeal from the image of the debtor as an honest and capable entrepreneur with ambition, knowledge, and a personal attachment to the business, deserving of a second chance. In modern corporate restructurings, however, the debtor is more realistically understood as a legal entity effectively controlled by a shifting coalition of managers, sponsors, dominant creditors, and new investors. Once attention shifts from formal debtor control to the actors who shape the process, debtor-friendliness appears more ambivalent. The same tools that enable timely rescue can also facilitate coercive value shifts, strategic positioning, and the externalisation of costs. Debtor-friendliness works best where it is embedded in a framework of fairness, scrutiny, and credible independent oversight.
About the speaker
Dr. David Christoph Ehmke is a legal scholar and practitioner. As a German qualified lawyer, he specialises in the areas of financial restructurings and insolvency, having worked at international law firms including Willkie Farr & Gallagher, GT Restructuring, and Sullivan & Cromwell. Dr. Dr. Ehmke holds an M.Sc. in Law and Finance from the University of Oxford (Clarendon Scholar), a PhD in Economics (Dr. rer. pol.), and a PhD in Law (Dr. iur.), both from Humboldt-University of Berlin. He has been a visiting researcher at the University of Oxford, Columbia University, and the University of Pennsylvania. His current research interests are in the areas of insolvency and corporate law, law & economics, law & finance, and law & technology.
Image credit: Freepik