II BGI European Continental Conference 2012 - Viena, Austria

The conference opened on the evening of the 16th, with a welcome cocktail and dinner, in the offices of our hosts; our Austrian partners NEUMAYER, WALTER & HASLINGER. Mr. Juan Luis Balmaseda de Ahumada Diez, President of BGI, opened the conference by welcoming all those present and thanking Mr. Wolfgang Haslinger, Mr. Johannes Neumayer and Mr. Ulrich Walter for their dedication and effort in organising the conference. The following day, the workshops and the real conference began. After the customary greeting from the president and a few brief introductory comments, the two new partners of BGI were presented: Espinosa & Associates, our new partners in Colombia and Solomon Taylor & Shaw, our new partners in the UK. The office of Espinosa and Associates was presented to the members using slides, while the office of Solomon Taylor & Shaw was presented by two of its partners, Mr. Mark Summerfield and Mr. Scott Atkinson, who attended the conference. They both expressed their pleasure at meeting their new partners and for belonging to an international network like BGI. Mr. Summerfield explained that Solomon Taylor & Shaw is a commercial firm and that they were very happy to belong to BGI. He also thanked all the partners for their welcome and the referred cases that they had already received, mainly from Colombia, Russia, and Gibraltar. He publicly thanked Paul Borge for his support and collaboration in the process of finding a new firm for BGI in London and he gave the new British partners the official plaque that certifies them as members, in full right, of BGI. Then he informed the partners of the new countries where there are firms which could become members of BGI: primarily Bolivia, Peru, USA, Venezuela, Panama, Costa Rica, Finland, Turkey, Canada, India, Sweden and Poland. Continuing with the agenda, he presented the new proposal for the structure of the Balms Group International website and for the structure of the new BGI departments; BGI Business and BGI Art, which will include an Intranet that only the members will have access to. After a long discussion over the contents of the website and what should be included in it or how the web page should be structured, the debate was concluded. Careful note was taken of everything that was said so it could be combined with what was decided and voted on in the American Conference, 15 days later. After the morning's work, the partners had lunch in the restaurant in the Grand Mercure Biedemier; the hotel where the conference was held. The afternoon session resumed after lunch. The subject in question was the fifth issue of the BGI Law Magazine, this year dedicated to "Bankruptcy Law and Corporate Settlement Procedures". The structure of the magazine, the topics, the cover photos and deadlines for the submission of articles were all discussed. The last item on the agenda was allocated to the next Global BGI Conference, the sixteenth, which will take place between the 1st and the 5th of May 2013. In the evening, as is tradition, the closing dinner was held, at which the President of Balms Group International gave the host partners a plaque of appreciation for their dedication and continued support.