This issue of EBOR presents to a wider audience the papers and proceedings of a symposium on ‘Efficient Creditor Protection in European Company Law’, which took place from 1 to 3 December 2005 at the premises of the Max Planck Institute in Munich, as a joint venture of Munich’s Ludwig Maximilians University and the Max Planck Institute for Intellectual Property, Competition and Tax Law. As the organisers of this conference, we were proud and delighted that so many outstanding scholars from Europe and the United States agreed to participate, give presentations, make comments and contribute to the discussions, although we had nothing to offer but a lot of preparatory work, uncomfortable winter travel and the prospect of exchanging some views on questions of corporate law reform in our conference room. We would also like to express our gratitude to the Max Planck Society for the Advancement of Sciences for its generous financial support of the conference and this publication.