MSMEs in Distress:Regulatory Costs and Efficiency Considerations in the Implementation of Preventive Restructuring Mechanisms: An Anglo-German-Italian Perspective

Micro-, Small- and Medium-Sized Enterprises (MSMEs) are the backbone of modern economies. MSMEs struggle to make the most of existing insolvency and restructuring tools, because their owners and directors often lack the knowledge, expertise and funding to navigate the legal remedies available to companies in financial distress.This article analyses recommendations stemming from reputable international organisations, as well as the academic debate in the area, to identify whether there is a general consensus in favour of an efficient and MSME-friendly insolvency framework being implemented at the national level. The purpose of this research is to assess whether the states considered in this study (Italy, Germany and the United Kingdom) should introduce MSME-specific rules, or alternatively amend existing rules, to comply with these recommendations.

Conjugate Addition of 3-Buytn-2-one to Anilines in Ethanol: Alkene Geometric Insights through In Situ FTIR Monitoring

A convenient, mild and effective conjugate addition of 3-butyn-2-one to a variety of anilines in ethanol is reported. The reaction was monitored and characterized through in situ FTIR, and the dynamics of the facile E/Z alkene geometry interconversion of the resultant aniline-derived enaminones was explored through NMR, FTIR and X-ray crystallography. A straightforward purification protocol that employs direct Kugelrohr distillation was identified, and the method was further extended to other amines and ynones, allowing rapid access to these interesting compounds

Harmonising insolvency law in the EU: New thoughts on old ideas in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic

While the harmonisation of insolvency law in the European Union (EU) has been a top priority on the European institutions’ agenda in the last decade, it is well known that this endeavour has been slow and has often met resistance from the Member States. The COVID-19 pandemic revealed that top-down harmonisation of insolvency (i.e. introduced at EU-level) has been temporarily halted. The urgency to control or mitigate the economically and financially destructive effects of the pandemic has, nevertheless, forced European governments to adopt domestic strategies and laws in the area of insolvency. Interestingly, however, such measures show that insolvency and restructuring law responses to the COVID-19 pandemic, albeit largely uncoordinated, reflect a phenomenon of bottom-up harmonisation(i.e. introduced by Member States) indicating a convergence towards common approaches. This paper interrogates the insolvency law responses to the COVID-19 pandemic in six European countries (Denmark, Germany, France, Italy, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom). It uncovers the inadequacy of the EU’s harmonisation language, and the limits of harmonisation strategies in insolvency and restructuring law. Finally, it promotes the formulation of a wider-encompassing definition of “legal harmonisation”

Do big unstructured biodiversity data mean more knowledge?

Conserving species biodiversity demands decisive and effective action. Effective action requires an understanding of species population dynamics. Therefore, robust measures which track temporal changes in species populations are needed. This need, however, must be balanced against the scale at which population change is being assessed. Advances in citizen science and remote sensing technology have heralded an era of “big unstructured data” for biodiversity conservation. However, the value of big unstructured data for assessing changes in species populations, and effectively guiding conservation management has not been rigorously assessed. This can be achieved only by benchmarking big unstructured data against high-quality structured datasets, and ensuring the latter are not lost through an over-emphasis on “big data.” Here, we illustrate the current trend to disproportionately prioritize data quantity over data quality and highlight the discrepancy in global availability between both data types. We propose a research agenda to test whether this trend will result in a net decrease of useful knowledge for biodiversity conservation. We exemplify this by examining the availability of big unstructured data vs. standardized data using data from global repositories on birds as an example. We share experiences from the data collation exercise needed to develop the Australian Threatened Species Index. We argue there is an urgent need to validate and enhance the utility of big unstructured data by: (1) maintaining existing well-designed, standardized long-term species population studies; (2) strengthening data quality control, management, and curation of any type of dataset; and (3) developing purpose-specific rankings to assess data quality

Metrics of progress in the understanding and management of threats to Australian birds

Although evidence‐based approaches have become commonplace for determining the success of conservation measures for the management of threatened taxa, there are no standard metrics for assessing progress in research or management. We developed 5 metrics to meet this need for threatened taxa and to quantify the need for further action and effective alleviation of threats. These metrics (research need, research achievement, management need, management achievement, and percent threat reduction) can be aggregated to examine trends for an individual taxon or for threats across multiple taxa. We tested the utility of these metrics by applying them to Australian threatened birds, which appears to be the first time that progress in research and management of threats has been assessed for all threatened taxa in a faunal group at a continental scale. Some research has been conducted on nearly three‐quarters of known threats to taxa, and there is a clear understanding of how to alleviate nearly half of the threats with the highest impact. Some management has been attempted on nearly half the threats. Management outcomes ranged from successful trials to complete mitigation of the threat, including for one‐third of high‐impact threats. Progress in both research and management tended to be greater for taxa that were monitored or occurred on oceanic islands. Predation by cats had the highest potential threat score. However, there has been some success reducing the impact of cat predation, so climate change (particularly drought), now poses the greatest threat to Australian threatened birds. Our results demonstrate the potential for the proposed metrics to encapsulate the major trends in research and management of both threats and threatened taxa and provide a basis for international comparisons of evidence‐based conservation science