Winning paper tackles issues with present regime of Companies’ Creditors Arrangement Act
Maria Belykh, JD’21 at the University of Western Ontario and articling student at Levitt Sheikh LLP, won the first prize worth $7,500 in the Law Student Writing Awards Program, an annual competition sponsored by the Insolvency Institute of Canada.
“I am proud Maria Belykh has won this national award for her insolvency scholarship,” said Erika Chamberlain, law dean, in a news release, which noted that, since 2011, Western Law students have garnered nine first-place awards, five second-place awards and three third-place awards in the competition.
Belykh’s paper titled “CCAA Supplier Protection: A System in Need of Reform” discussed significant issues with the present regime that, if remedied, could potentially lead to a system which incentivizes cooperation between debtors and their suppliers and which mitigates against the risk of bankruptcies during and beyond the COVID-19 crisis.
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Belykh will be honoured at the institute’s 2021 annual general meeting and will be invited as a guest to its 2022 annual conference in Kelowna, B.C. on Sept. 8 to 11 next year.
“I learned a lot about the profound effects that a few words in a piece of legislation could have on financially distressed businesses and on the suppliers that they rely on to stay afloat,” said Belykh in the news release from Western Law. Belykh thanked Thomas Telfer, the Western Law professor who nominated her, for inspiring her to delve deeper into the research and for guiding her paper’s direction.
According to information from the institute’s website, the Law Student Writing Awards Program seeks to get law students interested in the research and development of papers about corporate insolvency and restructuring and to offer opportunities for students to research insolvency issues, to develop ideas and to bring reform proposals to the attention of the business and legal community.
Kristen Robertson of Queen’s University won the second prize worth $5,000 for the paper titled “It's all the Effect: The Anti-Deprivation Rule Post-Chandos Construction,” for which Kevin McElcheran, adjunct lecturer at Queen’s Law, was the faculty sponsor.
Candace Formosa of Thomson Rivers University was awarded the third prize worth $2,500 for the paper called “Dampening the Effect of Redwater through a Reverse Vesting Order,” with Richard Butler serving as the faculty sponsor.
