Speaker details

Biography

Bob Wessels (1949) has over 45 years business law experience, including 13 years as a partner of (predecessors of) Ernst & Young (EY), in Amsterdam and in London. From 1988 – 2014 he has been a part-time professor of commercial law and international insolvency law at Universities in Amsterdam and Leiden. He held visiting professorships in Frankfurt (2003), Pretoria (2006), New York (St. John’s 2006-2011), Riga (2008-2012) and Luxembourg (Max Planck; 2016). From 2005-2019 he has had his own independent (international) legal practice, acting as expert witness (outside of the Netherlands some 10 times in courts in the USA, UK, Belgium, Poland, Switzerland, Greece, Austria, Ireland) and as (international) arbitrator, mainly in the area of general contract law, restructuring and insolvency law. In these roles he was involved in cases such as Belvedere S.A, Elektrim/Vivendi, Icesave/Landsbanki, OSX, O.W. Bunker, Steinhoff en Yukos Oil. He also acted as a consultant to the International Monetary Fund (Indonesia) and the World Bank (Georgia). Since 2010 he has been independent Expert Counsel to the European Commission in matters of restructuring and insolvency law (EU Insolvency Regulation (Recast); Preventive Restructuring Directive 2019; proposal for a Directive harmonising certain aspects of insolvency law 2022). Until 2016 he has served, since 1988, as Deputy Justice at the Court of Appeal (The Hague, The Netherlands). Since 2016 he is Chairman of the independent European think tank Conference of European Restructuring and Insolvency Law (CERIL, www.ceril.eu). He is co-founder of International Insolvency Institute (III), having been director between 2004-2010. He is Honorary member of INSOL Europe, having been Chair of its Academic Forum (2007-2010), International Fellow van het American College of Bankruptcy and a Fellow and co-reporter on cross-border and comparative restructuring and insolvency studies for both the American Law Institute (ALI) and the European Law Institute (ELI). In 2023 by Royal Order Bob Wessels was appointed Officer of the Order of Orange-Nassau for his longstanding contribution to the advancement of private law and in particular insolvency law in the Netherlands, Europe and beyond.