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About
Sarah Paterson is a professor of law. Her main areas of research are corporate reorganization and insolvency. Before joining LSE she was a partner in Slaughter and May in London, with whom she retains a consultancy. Sarah has been a Visiting Professor at Harvard Law School. In 2025 she was awarded GRR’s Cross-Border Insolvency Academic of the Year.
Research
Research Interests
- Corporate recovery and insolvency
- Trusts
Publications
Debt restructuring (Oxford University Press, 2022) 3rd ed. (with Rodrigo Olivares-Caminal, Alan Kornberg, Alan Kornberg, Dalvinder Singh, and Eric McLaughlin)
The new third edition of Debt Restructuring offers detailed legal analysis of international corporate, banking, and sovereign debt restructuring, from the perspective of creditors and debtors. It provides practical guidance to help practitioners, policy-makers, and academics in the UK and US to understand current developments in debt restructuring, and provides solutions for creditors holding distressed debt and debtor options in a distressed scenario.
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Corporate Reorganization Law and Forces of Change (OUP Oxford, 2020)
In this book, Sarah Paterson argues that since the 1980s almost every aspect of the landscape of large firms and finance has changed, with the result that corporate reorganization law is now mobilized and adapted by the participants in the process in new and diverse ways. She argues that, whichever theoretical or policy approach is adopted, these adaptations cannot all be evaluated using a single universal or fixed conceptual framework. Adopting a comparative US/UK approach, the book undertakes a detailed analysis of six forces of change which have developed in the finance and non-financial corporate fields. It analyses the ways in which these forces of change affected the nature of the corporate reorganization case, and the new ways in which participants in the corporate reorganization process mobilized and adapted corporate reorganization law in response. The book argues that it is crucial to analyze the specific adaptations of corporate reorganization law which emerged from this process of change. This demands that corporate reorganization law theorists or policy makers do not start their analysis using a conceptual framework developed in response to historical adaptations of corporate reorganization law. It is necessary, instead, to identify how dominant theoretical or policy concerns manifest themselves in the specific adaptation under review and to adapt conceptual frameworks accordingly.
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McKnight, Paterson, & Zakrzewski on the Law of International Finance, Sarah Paterson and Rafal Zakrzewski (eds) (OUP Oxford, 2017) 2nd ed.
This acclaimed and comprehensive work analyses the legal issues involved in international finance transactions operating under English law. The second edition thoroughly updates the book to take account of major developments in regulation, practice, and case law since the first edition published in 2008.
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- 'Majority Rule and Bankruptcy Resolution of Mass-Harm Events' 2026 online first at The University of Chicago Legal Forum (with Adrian Walters)
- 'Inability to Pay Debts in English Law: Appropriately Versatile or Inappropriately Vague?' in Florian Jacoby, Frank Kebekus, Michael Veder and Gerhard Wagner (eds) Vertrag – Prozess – Restrukturierung: Festchrift Für Reinhard Bork
- 'Developing Restructuring Law in Silos: Part 26A and Unexpired Leases' in Jennifer Payne and Kristen van Zwieten, Corporate Restructuring Law in Flux (Hart, 2025) (with Professor Adrian Walters)
- ‘Insolvency: what it means and why it matters for directors' duties’ in Wood, John, Ellina, Sofia and Tribe, John, (eds.) Creditors and Directors: Law and Liability (OUP, 2025) (In Press)
- 'A Qualified Defence of the Rule in Gibbs' LSE Law Legal Studies Working Papers 6/2025
- ‘The State of Cross-class Cramdown in the UK’ Butterworths Journal of International Banking and Financial Law (2024)
- ’Private equity in distress and the incentives of collateralised loan obligations’ (2024) Current Legal Problems
- 'Chapter 11's Inclusivity Problem' 55 Arizona State LJ 1227 (Winter 2023) (with Professor Adrian Walters)
- ‘Restructuring Moratoriums Through an Information-processing Lens’ (2023) Journal of Corporate Law Studies
- 'The Part A1 Moratorium Through a Signalling and Information-processing Lens' LSE Law School Working Paper Series 19/2022
- 'Selective Corporate Restructuring Strategy' 19 October 2022 Modern Law Review online first (with Adrian Walters)
- 'A Fine Balance: Insolvency Practitioners and the Leveraging of Intermediary Power' in Paul S Davis and Tan Cheng-Han SC (eds) Intermediaries in Commercial Law (Hart 2022)
- 'Wither Principle in English Corporate Restructuring Law?' 36(5) May 2021 Butterworths Journal of International Banking and Financial Law 322-324
- 'The Analytical Boundary Between Corporate Reorganisation and Sale in Corporate Bankruptcy Theory' in Paul J Omar and Jennifer L L Gant (eds) Research Handbook on Corporate Restructuring (Edward Elgar 2021)
- 'The Rise of Covenant-lite Lending and Implications for the UK's Corproate Insolvency Law Toolbox' (2019) 39(3) Oxford Journal of Legal Studies 654
- 'Market Organisations and Institutions in America and England: Valuation in Corporate Bankruptcy' 93 Chi.-Kent L. Rev. 801 (2018)
- 'Reflections on English Schemes of Arrangement in Distress and Suggestions for Reform' European Company and Financial Law Review (2018) 15 (3) pp.472-502
- 'Finding our way: secured transactions and corporate bankruptcy law and policy in America and England'Journal of Corporate Law Studies (2018) (online first)
- 'The Cost of Capital – the Normative Foundation of Corporate Law: A Reply' 14(2) ECFR August 2017.
- 'Debt Restructuring and Notions of Fairness' Modern Law Review (2017) 80 (4) pp.600–623
- 'The Paradox of Alignment: Agency Problems and Debt Restructuring'European Business Organisation Review (2016)
- 'A Case for Interfering with Freedom of Contract? An Empirically-Informed Study of Bans on Assignment' Journal of Business Law (2016( 3) pp.203-230 (with Hugh Beale and Louise Gulifer)
- 'Rethinking Corporate Bankruptcy Theory in the Twenty-First Century'Oxford Journal of Legal Studies (2015) pp.1-27
- 'Ban on assignment clauses: views from the coalface' Butterworths Journal of International Banking & Financial Law (2015) 30 (8) pp.463-466 (with Hugh Beale and Louise Gulifer)
- 'The adaptive capacity of markets and convergence in law: UK high yield issuers, US investors and insolvency law'Modern Law Review 2015, 78 (3), 431-460.
- 'Rethinking the Role of the Law of Corporate Distress in the Twenty-First Century'Law Society and Economy Working Paper Series, WPS 27-2014 December 2014
- 'Bargaining in Financial Restructuring: Market Norms, Legal Rights and Regulatory Standards'Journal of Corporate Law Studies 14 (2) (2014) pp.333-366
- ‘Lodging a Proof of Debt and Submission to Jurisdiction’ (2013) Corporate Rescue and Insolvency 6.3
- ‘COMI: The Elephant in the Room’ (2012) Corporate Rescue and Insolvency 5.4
- ‘Charter Communications: A Charter for Others?’ (2010) Corporate Rescue and Insolvency 3.4
- ‘LyondellBasell: The Longer Arm of Chapter 11’ (2009) Corporate Rescue and Insolvency 2.43
Teaching
Engagement and impact
External Activities
- Consultant to Slaughter and May
- Member of the Insolvency Lawyers’ Association
- Member of the Technical Committee of the Insolvency Lawyers’ Association
- Member of the Association of Business Recovery Professionals