In the spring of 1996 the capital flows to emerging market countries had renewed and the memory of the Mexican crisis had begun to fade. A lingering question at the time was how the future sovereign debt crises should be managed. The difficulty of mobilizing sufficient emergency lending whether from IMF, other banks or governments, had highlighted the need for a coordinated response to a debt crisis. The idea of a mechanism to enable sovereign debt restructurings had entered the policy agenda. At the conference the participants drew analogies to the reorganization provisions of Chapters 9 and 11 of the US bankruptcy code and attempted to understand the features of bankruptcy systems and the processes of resolving sovereign debt defaults. The event brought together besides academics and international institutions, some notable law firms, pension funds and rating agencies.