As global markets toppled during the 2008 financial crisis, the Canadian market for non-bank asset-backed commercial paper (ABCP) seemed on the verge of collapsing. Fueled by a top rating from DBRS, ABCP had found its way into the portfolios of some of Canada’s most sophisticated investors as well as vulnerable retail investors who didn’t know what they were holding.

The failure of the $32 billion market could have tipped Canadian and foreign credit default swap markets into chaos if it weren’t for the swift actions of a few powerful asset holders. Collectively, through the Montreal Accord and led by veteran Canadian lawyer Purdy Crawford, they managed to hold the Canadian ABCP market back from the brink of collapse by crafting a complex and innovative solution.

Back from the Brink goes behind the scenes of the ABCP crisis to examine how a solution was reached and lessons learned that could prevent or mitigate future crises. The authors also examine the imaginative use of the Companies' Creditors Arrangement Act and describe the roles played by the banks, the major investors, rating agencies, and the financial regulators in the crisis’s origins and conclusions. Back from the Brink holds important lessons for anyone interested in Canadian law, the future of complex investments, and Canada’s capital markets.

Paul Halpern is a professor emeritus of finance at the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto.

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Caroline Cakebread is the editor of Canadian Investment Review, writes widely on institutional and personal finance, and provides strategic and educational consulting services to institutional investors. She holds a PhD in English and writes and lectures on Shakespeare and contemporary women’s writing.

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Christopher C Nicholls holds the W Geoff Beattie Chair in Corporate Law at the Faculty of Law of Western University, where he was named a faculty scholar in 2013. He is a graduate of the University of Ottawa, Osgoode Hall Law School, and Harvard University. 

Professor Nicholls has been a Fulbright scholar and visiting professor of law at Harvard Law School, a Herbert Smith visitor at the University of Cambridge, a visiting scholar at Melbourne Law School, a visiting research scholar at the University of Tokyo, and the Falconbridge professor of commercial law at Osgoode Hall Law School. He has also been a visiting professor at the law faculties of the University of Toronto and Queen’s University.  

Before coming to Western University in 2006, Professor Nicholls was a member of the Dalhousie University Faculty of Law (now the Schulich School of Law at Dalhousie University) where he was the inaugural holder of the Purdy Crawford Chair in business law. Prior to beginning his career as an academic, he practiced corporate and securities law in Toronto and in Hamilton, Bermuda. 

He is currently the chair of the board of directors of the Mutual Fund Dealers Association of Canada and a member of the editorial advisory board for the Canadian Business Law Journal. He has previously served as a member (commissioner) of the Nova Scotia Securities Commission; as associate editor and corporate finance specialist editor of the Canadian Business Law Journal; as a member of the editorial board of the Canadian Journal of Law and Technology; as a research fellow with the Filene Research Institute in Madison, Wisconsin; as head of research and policy, Capital Markets Institute, Rotman School of Management, University of Toronto; and in 2015 as a member of the Business Law Agenda Expert Panel appointed by the Government of Ontario’s Ministry of Government and Consumer Services to provide recommendations for reform of Ontario’s corporate and commercial legislation. He has acted as an expert consultant to private law firms and government and regulatory agencies and has lectured to academic and professional audiences in Canada, the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia, South America, and Japan. He is the author of numerous articles on topics related to corporate law, securities regulation, corporate governance and finance, and the regulation of financial institutions. Professor Nicholls is the author or co-author of five other books, including Securities Law, 2d ed (Irwin Law, 2018).

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Poonam Puri is a professor at Osgoode Hall Law School at York University.

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