Sean Hagan, the general counsel of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in Washington, D.C., will deliver the University of Texas School of Law’s Akard Lecture at the Four Seasons Hotel Austin today (Nov. 18) at 5 p.m.
Hagan, who is also the director of the IMF’s Legal Department, will speak on “Restructuring Corporate Debt in the Course of a Systemic Crisis.”
The lecture in the San Jacinto Ballroom is free and open to the public. A reception in the San Jacinto foyer and patio will follow the lecture.
“Mr. Hagan has been closely involved in the Fund’s work both in the field working with distressed debtors, including sovereign debtors, and at the highest levels of policy making,” said UT Law Professor Jay L. Westbrook, a nationally prominent bankruptcy law scholar who will introduce Hagan at the Akard Lecture.
In his capacity as IMF general counsel, Hagan advises the Fund’s management, Executive Board and membership on legal aspects of the Fund’s operations, including its regulatory, advisory and lending functions. Hagan has published extensively on the law of the Fund and a broad range of legal issues relating to the prevention and resolution of financial crisis, with an emphasis on insolvency and the restructuring of debt, including sovereign debt.
Prior to beginning work at the IMF, Hagan was in private practice, first in New York and subsequently in Tokyo. He received his Juris Doctor degree from the Georgetown University Law Center and also received a master’s degree in International Economic Policy from the London School of Economics and Political Science.
This will be the fourth John C. Akard Distinguished Lectureship. The scholars who delivered the first three Akard lectures were Elizabeth Warren of Harvard Law School, Ronald Mann of Columbia Law School and Dean Harry Rajak of the Sussex Law Faculty.
The John C. Akard Distinguished Lectureship Program was endowed by the gifts of many members of the Texas bankruptcy bar in honor of Judge John C. Akard, a 1957 graduate of The University of Texas School of Law, who served with great distinction for 14 years as the U.S. Bankruptcy Judge in the Northern District of Texas, sitting in Lubbock and throughout much of West Texas. He continues to play a major role in the Law School’s bankruptcy conferences.
The Twenty-ninth Annual Jay L. Westbrook Bankruptcy Conference is being held at the Four Seasons Hotel on Nov. 1819, and is offered by the School of Law’s Office of Continuing Legal Education.
