From the Director Dec/Jan 2003
Redesigned ABI World Coming Soon!
ABI World will have a new look and improved functionality in early 2004. The site will feature cleaner graphics, extensive drop-down menus, a more powerful search engine, and a new-and-improved online membership directory. Maintained will be our commitment to the latest in substantive content useful to insolvency professionals. Home page fixtures will be daily headlines, legislative news, upcoming conference information and the ABI quick poll. Easy access to the Career Center, American Board of Certification, GlobalINSOLvency.com and streaming media are also featured. A new content-management system and cutting-edge web search technology will permit our many thousands of research and educational products to be easily retrieved, at no cost to members. This will dramatically enhance the site's usefulness as a research tool and membership benefit. ABI World traffic has grown exponentially in the last two years. Through September of this year, total page views were nearly 16 million—double the views for the entire year of 2002. More than 500,000 unique visitors from around the world have reached the home page during the first nine months of this year. Credit for the management of the site's growth and the redesign is due to our communications staff, led by our Director of Communications, Melissa Lanning Trumpower, and Webmaster, Karim Guirguis. The new site will be demonstrated during the Winter Leadership Conference at La Quinta. Watch for special mailings and postcard announcement soon!
Educational Exchange Assists French Bankruptcy Reform Effort
ABI members were prominent during a series of November meetings with the national leadership of French judicial administrators and trustees, along with representatives of the French Ministry of Justice. The meetings took place in the context of proposed changes in French bankruptcy law inspired by chapter 11. The French Conseil National des administrateurs judicidaries et mandataires judiciaires (CNAJMJ) are the experts and specialists to the profession in France. The association also consults with the legislature, much like the role ABI serves in the United States. The meeting objectives included an overview of restructuring procedures, including out-of-court options for medium and smaller businesses. Discussion with the key U.S. players focused on the comparative aspects of American and continental practice, including the role of judges, public and private trustees, and professional organizations. The Washington, D.C., sessions were held at the AOUSC and concluded with a roundtable at the French Embassy before the venue shifted to Boston for the final two days. Many ABI members participated in the exchange, including ABI Directors Judge Judith Fitzgerald (W.D. Pa.), Executive Director Sam Gerdano and former Director Joe Bodoff (Bodoff & Slavitt; Boston). Others included Alan Stout, Hugh Ray, Joseph Guzinski, Babette Cecotti, Michael Baxter, Steven Gray, Howard Brownstein and Lynne Riley.
ABI Welcomes New Staff
Katherine Duke joined our staff in November as a Membership Associate. She joins ABI after two years of experience in membership relations in the non-profit arena for the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation. Katherine will work on data collection, membership prospecting and analysis, assisting in new member campaigns and membership services. A native of North Carolina, she is a 2001 graduate of Wake Forest University.
ABI, NCBJ Sponsor Mexican Educational Exchange
ABI and the National Conference of Bankruptcy Judges co-sponsored a six-day educational exchange program on international judicial cooperation. The program was co-chaired by Josefina Fernandez McEvoy (Squire, Sanders & Dempsey L.L.P.; Los Angeles) and Hon. Louise DeCarl Adler (U.S. Bankruptcy Court; San Diego). The first segment of the program took place in Los Angeles from Oct. 12-14. Four Mexican federal district court judges experienced in handling bankruptcy cases—Judge Ariel A. Rojas (3rd District, Veracruz), Judge Miguel Mendoza M. (5th District, Veracruz), Judge Guillermo Campos O. (12th District, Mexico City) and Judge Carlos Padilla P. (8th District, Mexico City)—met with several bankruptcy judges from the Central District of California, including Chief Judge Barry Russell, Hon. Thomas Donovan, Hon. Ernest Robles, Hon. Erithe Smith and Hon. Samuel L. Bufford, to learn about each nation's bankruptcy system and explore ways to facilitate the administration of cross-border cases between U.S. and Mexican constituencies. They were accompanied by Lic. Luis C. Mejan, Director General of Federal Institute of Bankruptcy Specialists (IFECOM), an adjunct of Mexico's Federal Judicial Council that oversees the administration of bankruptcy cases in Mexico, and Lic. Griselda Nieblas A., an officer and a member of the Board of Directors of IFECOM.
Jon Ceretto, clerk of the bankruptcy court in Los Angeles, explained the court's intake and case-initiation system and electronic filings. The judges spent a full day at the Office of the U.S. Trustee, where U.S. Trustee Maureen Tighe and her staff explained the office's responsibilities and discussed ways to improve oversight in Mexico. The judges also had the opportunity to interact with prominent members of the Los Angeles Bar, including Gary Klausner (Stutman, Treister & Glatt P.C.), Robin Itkins (Kirkland & Ellis), James Stang (Pachulski, Stang, Ziehl, Young, Jones & Weintraub PC), Michael A. Tuchin (Klee, Tuchin, Bogdanoff & Stern LLP) and Kimberly Winick (Mayer, Brown Roe & Maw LLP), which hosted a beach-front dinner for the judges.
Andrew Caine (Pachulski, Stang, Ziehl, Young, Jones & Weintraub PC), ABI's immediate past president, welcomed the judges at a kick-off dinner in Pasadena. Special thanks go to members of the Latino Turnaround and Insolvency Network (LATIN) for preparing outstanding materials in Spanish for the Mexican judges.