Hamish Anderson is an insolvency lawyer based in London where he primarily acts for insolvency practitioners, banks and other creditors but he also advises and acted for governments and regulators.
Hamish has had extensive experience of both corporate and personal insolvency issues in the UK covering a wide range of sectors. His work has included dealing with bank and investment bank insolvency, insurance insolvency, infrastructure projects, transport (including aviation shipping and rail), construction and technology. He has worked on state-owned and privatised enterprises.
Hamish specialises in cross-border cases and his work frequently involves the insolvency laws of other jurisdictions. Relevant experience includes the laws of the United States, common law systems (for example Australia, Hong Kong, Singapore and Ireland), civil law systems (for example, Switzerland, Italy, the Netherlands, Greece, Latvia and France), certain of the Gulf States and off-shore jurisdictions (for example, the Channel Islands, Bermuda, Cyprus and the Cayman Islands). His work frequently involves EU insolvency law and the various national enactments of the UNCITRAL Model Law on Cross-border Insolvency. Recent cases involving working with and understanding different insolvency laws include co-ordinating the (ongoing) multi-jurisdictional liquidation of Swissair's aircraft leasing operations on behalf of the liquidators, advising in relation to failed securitisations and acting for the US trustee of Lehman Brothers Inc. on the US/UK issues resulting in a settlement of US$38bn claims.
Hamish has been a solicitor since 1973 and a licensed insolvency practitioner since 1987. He has been involved in the development of UK insolvency law for more than 25 years as an active participant in the UK Government's consultation processes, first on behalf of the Law Society of England and Wales and latterly as the current Chairman of the City of London Law Society's Insolvency Committee. He has also been invited to join a number of more informal consultation groups organised by the UK Government for example assisting HM Treasury in the introduction of legislation for protected cell companies. He is currently assisting the UK Insolvency Service with its response to proposals to amend the EC Insolvency Regulation and its revision and restatement of the (English) Insolvency Rules.
Amongst many other appointments, Hamish is a past president of the Insolvency Lawyers' Association and served as a member of the Insolvency Practices Council (a public interest body charged with advising the UK insolvency profession and its regulators on professional and ethical standards).
In January 2009, Kingston University awarded Hamish an honorary doctorate in recognition of his contribution to the development of insolvency law. Hamish is also a Visiting Fellow at Kingston's Centre for Insolvency Law and Policy and a Visiting Professor at Nottingham Trent University. His many publications include more recently joint editorship of Lightman & Moss: The Law of Receivers of Companies, Sweet & Maxwell, 5th Edn, 2011, joint consultant editorship of Transaction Avoidance in Insolvencies, Oxford University Press, 2nd Edn, 2011 and contributions to forthcoming works on directors' duties and the treatment of executory contracts in insolvency.