Watson Farley & Williams (“WFW”) is delighted to announce the official launch today of the firm’s new online interactive legal analytics tool, the Global Aviation Restructuring Index or GARI, at the Ishka+ Aviation Investival: North America virtual conference.
WFW, led by Global Aviation Sector Co-Heads Jim Bell and Charles Viggers and Aviation Partner Dominic Pearson, the editor of the index, developed GARI as a supportive and helpful tool freely available to all participants in the aviation industry, providing them with a comparative index of 50 restructuring procedures available in 25+ key aviation jurisdictions. GARI presents information visually through infographics and assigns debtor and creditor ‘friendliness’ scores to complex restructuring procedures in order to make high-level comparisons easy to digest.
Jim commented: “The aviation industry has witnessed a significant increase in the use of restructuring procedures over the past 18 months as a means of combating the negative impact of the global Covid-19 pandemic. With airline debtors increasingly willing to access and take advantage of procedures outside of their home jurisdiction, the ability to compare restructuring procedures has become increasingly important to creditors. GARI will help them do just that”.
Dominic added: “We hope that business leaders and legal, commercial and finance teams will find GARI useful in quickly providing key information, analysis and comparison on relevant restructuring procedures and how they might affect their business or interests. We also believe users can factor information from GARI into their credit approval process for future aviation financing and leasing transactions, to further support the sector”.
Both Jim and Dominic have previous experience helping develop, implement and launch industry-changing online tools for the aviation sector, having advised the Aviation Working Group (AWG) on the AWG Carbon Calculator (ACC) and Global Aircraft Trading System (GATS) respectively.
Access GARI here.
Thanks also to the 14 other law firms who contributed data to GARI for their respective jurisdictions. The law firms contributing data are: Basch & Rameh in Brazil; Blake, Cassels & Graydon LLP in Canada; Sarin & Co in India; A&L Goodbody in Ireland; Sonderhoff & Einsel Law and Patent Office in Japan; Raja, Darryl & Loh in Malaysia; Abogados Sierra S.C. in Mexico; NautaDutilh in the Netherlands; NYZ Partners in Russia; Webber Wentzel in South Africa; Kim & Chang in South Korea; Mannheimer Swartling Advokatbyrå AB in Sweden; Dikici Law Office in Turkey; and WFW’s formal law alliance firm Wong Tan & Molly Lim LLC in Singapore.
