Book excerpt: This edited volume is based on the European Law Institute's project, The Rescue of Business in Insolvency Law, which ran from 2013 to 2016. The project sought to investigate and articulate the essential features of well-functioning procedures for the "rescue" of distressed but viable businesses. Although the focus was primarily on the design and implementation of formal procedures (that is, those provided by law), the project also required consideration of the interaction between such procedures and informal solutions to distress, given the obvious cost advantages of the latter. The ELI project was not confined exclusively to restructurings, since these are only one possible route to maximising the value of a distressed but viable business (an auction procedure, in which the business is sold on a going concern basis to a new owner, is one obvious alternative). The ELI project encompasses various aspects of both public/constitutional law and insolvency law that may have a bearing on the functionality of formal restructuring procedures.