|| This seminar is open ONLY to EUI members ||

Join us for the next event of the 'Finance in the Tuscan Hills' seminar series, where we host Myrte Thijssen, Senior Legal Officer at UNIDROIT, and Ignacio Tirado, Secretary-General at UNIDROIT.

While post-Global Financial Crisis reforms have largely focused on the resolution of systemically important banks, the failure of non-systemic banks continued to be governed by national legal frameworks, which vary significantly in scope, design, and effectiveness. In many jurisdictions, liquidation – rather than resolution – remains the principal mechanism for addressing such failures, raising important questions about legal certainty, creditor protection, and the orderly exit of banks from the market.

This seminar examines the orderly liquidation of non-systemic banks through the lens of the recently adopted UNIDROIT Legislative Guide on Bank Liquidation, which offers a comprehensive and internationally informed framework for the design of bank liquidation regimes. The Guide seeks to build on general insolvency law principles, while at the same time accommodating the distinctive features of banks, including their public policy functions, depositor base, and close regulatory oversight.

In line with UNIDROIT’s established working method, the Legislative Guide was developed over a three-year period by an international group of experts drawn from both common law and civil law jurisdictions, as well as from regulatory, academic, and practitioner backgrounds. This inclusive and comparative approach underpins the Guide’s objective of providing flexible yet coherent legislative guidance adaptable to diverse legal systems.

The seminar explores the Guide’s core policy objectives, including legal certainty, procedural efficiency, depositor protection, and effective coordination among banking supervisors, resolution and liquidation authorities, and courts. It analyses key design elements such as triggers for the commencement of liquidation, available liquidation tools, the role and powers of the liquidation authority and liquidator, the treatment and ranking of depositors and other creditors, the role of deposit insurers, and the interaction between bank liquidation regimes and general insolvency frameworks.

By situating the Legislative Guide within the broader landscape of bank failure management, the seminar highlights its relevance for legislators, regulators, and practitioners seeking to strengthen legal frameworks for non-systemic bank failures. The discussion aims to contribute to ongoing debates on proportionality in bank regulation, the preservation of financial stability, and the relationship between bank resolution and liquidation regimes.

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Myrte Thijssen is a Senior Legal Officer at UNIDROIT, where she is mainly responsible for the UNIDROIT Legislative Guide on Bank Liquidation, the Workstream on Financial Markets and Technology, the UNIDROIT Foundation, and the project on International Investment Contracts. Before joining UNIDROIT, Myrte worked for the Dutch Central Bank, the Single Resolution Board, and the Italian national development bank. She studied at the University of Amsterdam and New York University. She has taught Corporate Law and Law of Bank Crisis Management at the University of Amsterdam and the University of Bologna respectively. She has published several articles in the field of banking and financial law with a particular focus on bank resolution

Professor Ignacio Tirado was appointed Secretary-General by the Governing Council at its 97th session, and officially took office on 27 August 2018. He was renewed for a second term by the Governing Council at its 102nd session in 2023. A national of Spain, Professor Tirado (Commercial, Corporate and Insolvency Law, Universidad Autónoma of Madrid, Spain) holds a PhD from the Universities of Bologna and Autónoma de Madrid and an LLM from the University of London. Professor Tirado has been a Senior Legal Consultant at the World Bank’s Legal Vice-Presidency and Financial Sector Practice for more than nine years, having also consulted for the IMF on insolvency related matters as well as for the Asian Development Bank on commercial legal reform.  

Amongst other accolades to his professional experience, Professor Tirado is a founding member of the European Banking Institute (EBI), Member of the Expert Group of the European Commission on insolvency reform, Vice President of the Conference on European Restructuring and Insolvency Law (CERIL), former Vice-President of the International Insolvency Institute, and a member of the American College of Bankruptcy.

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The FBF seminar series ‘Finance in the Tuscan Hills’ focuses on financial sector issues and aims to bring together researchers from across the EUI community, who share an interest in these subjects.