7th INTERDISCIPLINARY CONFERENCE ON BUSINESS FAILURE

Burgundy School of Business, 29 rue Sambin, 21000 Dijon, France

 03^rd & 04^th April 2025 

Corporate reorganization: success and failure

https://7cide.sciencesconf.org/

The pandemic crisis left significant marks on the bankruptcy environment as numerous countries suffered large increases in the business insolvencies. Unfortunately, the rise in the level of economic policy uncertainty also enhanced the corporate default risk (Lu et al., 2023; Nguyen et al., 2022). In this unstable environment, managers and shareholders can be confronted with financial difficulties that can drive firms out of the local market. However, national bankruptcy legislations embraced multiple reforms in the last two decades aiming to facilitate the survival of firms through court-driven restructuring procedures (Stef, 2017). Such path to settle the creditors’ firms and strengthen the firm’s health is suitable if it is successful. In this regard, assessing the success of reorganization proceedings can rely upon different criteria. On the one hand, the firm’s market value and the level of debt recovery resulting from the financial and nonfinancial measures included in the restructuring plan can represent relevant measures of ex post efficiency. On the other hand, the length of the procedure, the bankruptcy costs and the filtering capacity of the bankruptcy system to permit only the restructuring of viable firms can also be associated with the success of corporate reorganization.

Achieving success may require overcoming some challenges. Disagreements between (among) creditors and managers can occur mainly when the design of the reorganization plan requires decisions with a high level of risk or decisions with a high degree of debt forgiveness. Bankruptcy reorganization can help firms identify and adopt strategic measures to preserve the assets value, to mitigate tensions between creditors and stakeholders (James, 2016) and to resolve operational uncertainties (Kang et al., 2020). According to the national legislation and the institutional framework, some restructuring procedures can be better designed to improve the coordination among the claimholders, to monitor the debtor’s activity and to incentivize managers and creditors to promptly file for bankruptcy (Blazy et al., 2018).  

In the current context of economic, political and climate uncertainties, understanding what drives the success of corporate restructuring is of major importance not only for legislators and bankruptcy practitioners, but also for employees, creditors and local/national economy. The 7th Interdisciplinary Conference on Business Failure will be devoted to the analysis of corporate reorganization and the challenges the courts, debtors and creditors must overcome in achieving more successful restructurings.

We would like to invite submissions with an empirical or theoretical approach addressing all aspects related to bankruptcy reorganization and the survival of financially distressed firms. Topics of interest also include, but are not limited to:

•      Bankruptcy and managerial strategies
•      Climate change and firm’s financial distress
•      Artificial intelligence and the prediction of business failure
•      Bankruptcy legislation
•      Audit, accounting and business insolvency
•      Financial health and uncertainty
•      Bankruptcy courts
•      Creditors’ involvement in bankruptcy procedures
•      Resilience of firms
•      Risk management and bankruptcy risk
•      Employees and business insolvency
•      External environment and firm’s financial health
•      Corporate governance and bankruptcy
•      Bankruptcy prediction

This conference will be an opportunity to debate these questions by bringing together researchers, professor-researchers and doctoral students, mainly in the fields of Law and Management Sciences. All papers relating to the concepts of failure in the broadest sense are welcome. We invite you to develop critical, new and original perspectives on a variety of topics related to failure. 

Authors wishing to submit the final version of their research paper to the special issue "Crossed views on the resilience of individual entrepreneurs" of the journal Entreprendre & Innover (FNEGE 4) will find more information about this special issue (in particular the theme addressed and the objectives) in the call for papers available via the following link:

https://entreprendreetinnover.com/2024/10/14/appel-a-contribution-2025-4-67-regards-croises-sur-la-resilience-des-entrepreneurs-individuels/

References :

Blaz, R., Petey, J., & Weill, L. (2018). Serving the creditors after insolvency filings: from value creation to value distribution. European Journal of Law and Economics, 45, 331-375.

James, S. D. (2016). Strategic bankruptcy: A stakeholder management perspective. Journal of Business Research, 69(2), 492-499.

Kang, T. H., James, S. D., & Fabian, F. (2020). Real options and strategic bankruptcy. Journal of Business Research, 117, 152-162.

Lu, C., Yang, M., & Xia, X. (2023). Economic policy uncertainty and default risk: evidence from China. Economic Analysis and Policy, 79, 821-836.

Nguyen, D. N., & Nguyen, C. P. (2022). Uncertainty and corporate default risk: Novel evidence from emerging markets. Journal of International Financial Markets, Institutions and Money, 78, 101571.

Stef, N. (2017). Voting rules in bankruptcy law. Review of Law & Economics, 13(1), 20140063. 

Registration Information

Registration procedure: contributors are invited to submit an extended abstract on a document in A4 format, single spaced, margins of 2.5 cm, Times New Roman font size 12, including a title and a 500-word abstract in which the problem, the methodology, the conceptual and/or theoretical framework as well as the results and potential contributions will be presented. These intentions must be submitted before December 20, 2024 on the conference website.

Amount of registration fees: 150 €

The registration fee for this conference is 150 euros applied to all participants, whether or not they present a paper. These expenses include coffee breaks as well as lunch and gala dinner.

Online registration (online payment, purchase order) is available on the conference website:

https://7cide.sciencesconf.org/

Deadlines

December 20, 2024 (deadline): Submission of an extended abstract (500 words).

From January 20, 2025: Notification of decision

March 7, 2025: Submission of the final version of the article 

March 14, 2025: Registration deadline

Organizing Committee 

Prof. Nicolae Stef (Burgundy School of Business)

Prof. Xavier Brédart (University of Mons)

Prof. Éric Severin (University of Lille).

For further information, please contact:

nicolae.stef@bsb-education.com ; xavier.bredart@umons.ac.be ; eric.severin@univ-lille.fr