ICA National Conference to analyse  reasons for recent business failures

Attorney at Law and Partner of Nithya Partners Naomal Goonewardena will address the National Conference of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Sri Lanka on the topic of ‘Recent Business Failures and its Impact on Economic Revival’.

He will extensively focus on business failures which occurred in the financial sector in the recent past and certain failures which were averted during the same period.

Andrew Steel – Managing Director of Asia Pacific-Corporate Ratings Group Fitch Ratings Singapore Pte Ltd; Travine Fernandopulle – Chief Risk Officer of Bank of Ceylon; Sujeewa Mudalige – President ICASL; and Thilan Wijesinghe, former Group Managing Director of Oversees Reality (Ceylon) PLC will shed light to the session at the panel discussion, following Goonewardena’s presentation.

Goonewardena will analyse the general factors which led to such failures and the actions which were taken to avert certain such failures. During his session, he will also examine and discuss the role of the Government in intervening to facilitate ‘bailouts’ during failures. An analysis will be made on a particular business failure in more detail to identify the specific factors which contributed to such failures.

He will also examine the various efforts which were exerted in order to resuscitate the group entities concerned and/or enable the most optimum realisation of assets, the legal and regulatory responses and the responses from the various stakeholders to such exertions which have ultimately resulted in dormant companies with distressed assets resulting in losses being suffered by all stakeholders.

The institutional and capital market mechanisms available within the economy to deal with business failures and their efficacy would also be subject to examination in this regard.

Types of distressed assets which are prevalent in the economy both in the private sector as well as in the public sector and the drag which it creates on the governmental efforts to create a new era with high economic growth, will be identified by Goonewardena during his session on 30 October.

Goonewardena has worked as a Sate Counsel in the Attorney General’s Department (1987-1991), as a Corporate Lawyer of the DFCC Bank (1991-1993). He specialises in financial law related areas of work in the firm including loan syndications, securitisations, derivatives, banking, takeovers and mergers, restructuring of companies and taxation. He was appointed to the Board of Seylan Bank in the immediate aftermath of the Ceylinco crisis and served in such capacity from January 2009 to November 2009.