Thought Leadership
Dan Glosband honored at III with its Outstanding Contribution Award
Watch the video of the award presentation from the III Toronto conference:
III, Toronto: Felsberg and Glosband honoured at 22nd annual event
Ben Clarke
07 September 2022
Goodwin Proctor of counsel Dan Glosband and Felsberg Advogados founding partner Thomas Felsberg have been recognised for their decades of service to the insolvency community at the International Insolvency Institute’s annual conference in Toronto.
On 6 September, during the III’s “legendary dinner” at the Art Gallery of Ontario, Glosband was awarded with the organisation’s outstanding contribution award after a career spanning over 50 years, and Felsberg was bestowed with the Founder’s Award for his efforts furthering the III’s work.
With decades of experience working on international restructurings, Glosband played a prominent role helping to draft the UNCITRAL Model Law on Cross-Border Insolvency and has since represented countless foreign liquidators and scheme administrators in Chapter 15 cases.
Professor Jay Westbrook of the University of Texas, who led the US delegation to UNCITRAL and later drafted Chapter 15 with Glosband, introduced the outstanding contribution award, calling Glosband a “pioneer” who started working on international insolvencies “at the very start”.
“Out of all the outstanding things he has done, the most important and crucial was his central role in the making of the Model Law,” Westbrook said. “He is the best legislative draftsmen I’ve ever known.”
Boston-based Glosband retired from Goodwin Procter’s partnership in 2014 after over 25 years at the helm, which saw him represent the receiver of US hedge fund Ascot Partners in litigation brought by the New York attorney general and the trustee of Bernie Madoff’s main investment vehicle.
He also advised The Education Resources Institute, a guarantor of over US$20 billion in student loans, in significant Chapter 11 proceedings in Massachusetts; and CNA Insurance as one of the main insurers of US chemical group WR Grace, which was in Chapter 11 bankruptcy for over 12 years in the face of thousands of asbestos-related personal injury claims.
Accepting the award, Glosband noted that he first became interested in cross-border insolvency almost 40 years ago when he was hired by the Canadian receivers of Fishery Products to oppose its Chapter 11 proceedings in Massachusetts.
After that first engagement, Glosband continued to act for foreign liquidators and administrators in cases under Chapter 15’s predecessor, section 304 of the Bankruptcy Code – including in relation to the Bahamas winding up of Thornhill Global Deposit Fund and the English and Bermudian scheme restructuring of Transcon Insurance.
Since Chapter 15 was introduced, he has continued to be sought out to act for foreign parties in US bankruptcies, and increasingly to submit expert opinions on US recognition to the courts of England, Bermuda, Hong Kong and Ireland.
After stepping down from the Goodwin partnership in 2014, Glosband founded CBInsolvency to provide mediation, consulting and expert testimony in cross-border cases.
Named as a global leader in the restructuring field by Who’s Who Legal, Glosband offered recent expert opinions in the Hong Kong restructuring of coal group Winsway and the English scheme proceedings of Spanish gaming company Codere and travel group Thomas Cook.
Outside of the office, he advises the US Congress on bankruptcy legislation as a conferee of the National Bankruptcy Conference. He is also a fellow of the American College of Bankruptcy and was a founding member of the III.
“This award is a ftting testament to Dan’s professionalism, contributions to the development of insolvency law, and the respect earned from peers around the world,” said Michael Goldstein, chair of Goodwin’s restructuring group.
He said Glosband is a “trailblazing lawyer, innovator and educator” who has been at the forefront of some of the most important developments in the international insolvency field for over 50 years.
Dean of the insolvency bar
Earlier in the evening, Davis Polk & Wardwell partner Don Bernstein presented Felsberg with the Founder’s Award, issued in honour of the III’s founder Bruce Leonard. Bernstein said no one could be more deserving of the award than Felsberg. “We all know that Tom is one of the leading
insolvency practitioners in the world and he is the dean of the insolvency bar in Brazil,” he said.
Felsberg, who was bestowed with GRR’s lifetime achievement award in 2019, founded his eponymous firm in Brazil over 50 years ago and is well known globally for his work in the restructuring space.
He has taken a role in practically all of Brazil’s major restructurings and recently acted for bondholders of Brazilian telecoms group Oi, which completed Latin America’s largest restructuring in January 2019.
As well as being a founding member of the III, Felsberg is active in many other industry associations, including the American Bankruptcy Institute, the American College of Bankruptcy and INSOL International.
Bernstein noted Felsberg’s role in the III’s history, serving in multiple roles, including as a leader of the organisation’s Latin America regional committee and as a contributor to many III projects. More recently, Felsberg was a mainstay of the III’s thought leadership group formed in the wake of the covid-19 pandemic.
“Tom is called upon by the institute all too frequently for his help, and he never says no,” Bernstein said. “Tom has been, and is in no small part, responsible for the institute’s success.”
In recent years, Felsberg was also asked by the Brazilian government to help remodel its bankruptcy law, which led to amendments passed at the end of 2020 to bring the UNCITRAL Model Law onto Brazil’s statute book and to introduce the concept of debtor-in-possession financing.
Just after the law originally came into force in 2005, Felsberg filed the first major insolvency cases, acting for the local arm of Italian dairy producer Parmalat in São Paulo and Brazilian airline Varig in Rio de Janeiro.
Listed as a global thought leader in the restructuring space by Who’s Who Legal, Felsberg has also been praised for his non- aggressive style and his championing of mediation as a solution in insolvencies.
Bernstein said Felsberg has been one of the most successful lawyers in the field because of his special qualities as a lawyer and a person. “Tom is always calm in the midst of chaos, and is always rational and reasonable,” said Bernstein. “That’s pretty rare among our breed.”
After graduating from the University of São Paulo in 1966, Felsberg completed an LLM at Columbia University, where he remains president of the university’s advisory board for its Club of Brazil.
He founded Felsberg Advogados in 1970 and has also served as a consultant to the World Bank on insolvency and direct credit issues and to the International Monetary Fund.
The III’s 22nd annual conference took place on 6 and 7 September in Toronto.
Ben Clarke
Author | Deputy Editor
benjamin.clarke@lbresearch.com
Copyright © Law Business Research Company Number: 03281866 VAT: GB 160 7529 10