Restructuring and Insolvency

The team comprises restructuring and insolvency specialists throughout Europe, the Americas and Asia, who work closely with the firm’s top tier finance and corporate practices. They also have experience of other relevant areas of law, such as tax, employment, real estate, intellectual property and litigation & arbitration.

Creditors, including banks and other financial investors and steering committees, insolvency practitioners, corporate debtors and their directors/officers rely on the team’s leading restructuring and insolvency expertise. This encompasses debt restructuring and rescheduling, equity capital raising and restructuring, distressed M&A activity, investigation, asset tracing and insolvency litigation, formal insolvency procedures and contingency planning, distressed creditor and equity investment and trading and debtor advisory work.

Recent restructuring and insolvency experience includes: 

Advising creditors on cross-border and complex restructurings

  • Victoria’s Secret: advising Deloitte as administrators of Victoria’s Secret UK Limited, in the course of a trading administration and business sale

  • the CoCom on two restructurings by way of schemes of arrangement of Airwave Solutions Limited
  • the administrators and receivers in connection with Battersea Power Station
  • an ad hoc committee of bondholders on the complex restructuring of Codere
  • Eircom on its €4bn balance sheet restructuring, the largest examiner ship in Irish history
  • Barclays Bank as lender and then FTI as joint administrators of the mobile technology company Globo PLC
  • the ad hoc committee on the consensual financial restructuring of the H.C. Starck Group
  • the CoCom on the £2.2bn restructuring of hibu implemented using multiple complex English schemes of arrangement
  • the ad hoc committee of holders on the €1.435bn of 6.625% senior notes due 2021 of Isolux Corsán
  • the CoCom of senior lenders on the €408m restructuring implemented by way of a pre-pack of the Marken Group
  • the committee of bondholders on the US$3bn standstill scheme of arrangement for the 2016 notes and PXF facilities of Metinvest
  • the CoCom of secured creditors on the €900m debt and equity restructuring of Van Gansewinkel Groep BV
  • the EBOK lenders on the restructuring and subsequent insolvency of Afren
  • the ad hoc committee of holders on the restructuring of Dana Gas’s $1bn sukuk
  • the international lenders on the US$360m extension of Lonmin plc’s existing credit facility
  • the CoCom on the US$3.4bn debt restructuring of Zim Integrated Shipping Services Ltd 
  • the administrative agent for the senior secured lender group in the highly litigious Chapter 11 cases of Sabine Oil & Gas and its affiliated debtors
  • the administrative agent for the senior secured lender to a global financial institution with respect to its senior secured vessel loans in the Chapter 11 cases of the Greek shipping company Toisa Ltd.
  • Shandong Iron and Steel Group, owner of a 25% interest in the Tonkolili iron ore project in Sierra Leone, on the acquisition of the 75% interest owned by African Minerals via an acquisition of the lenders’ interests in a pre-export finance facility and the subsequent enforcement of security over shares
  • PwC as joint administrators of Lehman Brothers International (Europe) on the multi-jurisdictional insolvency of Lehman Brothers
  • Grant Thornton as liquidators of Saad Investments Company Limited, an investment fund forming part of the Saad Group. This was one of the Gulf’s most complicated and contentious restructurings (over US$13bn of creditors’ claims)  and involved contentious litigation across several jurisdictions
  • the temporary administrator and subsequently the bankruptcy administrator of Bankas Snoras, the largest deposit taking institution in Lithuaniaa major investor in relation to the Cayman liquidations of the SPhinX  group of the companies
  • BNP Paribas and HSH Nordbank on the recovery of  loans made to Volga-Fest, the Russian steel company, including via formal insolvency proceedings in Russia  

Advising debtors on cross-border and complex restructurings

  • Abengoa on its global financial restructuring including through homologación judicial
  • Biffa on the £1.1bn restructuring via a scheme of arrangement in conjunction with other contractual mechanisms
  • CGG (formerly Compagnie Générale de Géophysique) on its innovative offer to exchange unsecured 2017 bonds into secured 2019 loans
  • Cortefiel on the modification and extension of terms in its financing through the first amend and extend scheme
  • Global Garden Products on its €225m amend and extend via a scheme of arrangement
  • Norske Skog on the US$1bn restructuring of its debt obligations under its secured and unsecured notes
  • Seat Pagine Gialle , Italian directories and maps publisher, in connection with its 2012 debt restructuring COMI shift to UK, the first ever scheme of arrangement of an Italian company
  • Towergate Insurance Group on the £1.05bn restructuring via multiple English schemes of arrangement including chapter 15 recognition

Advising on bank resolution or insolvency recapitalisations and NPLs

  • the curator of African Bank, PWC, in respect of a bank resolution and liability management exercise
  • the temporary administrator and subsequently the bankruptcy administrator of Bankas Snoras, the largest deposit taking institution in Lithuania
  • Banco Espirito Santo and its successor, Novo Banco, in respect of the bank’s resolution scheme
  • PwC as joint administrators of Lehman Brothers International (Europe) on the multi-jurisdictional insolvency of Lehman Brothers

Advising on insolvencies including trading insolvencies and business rescues

  • Ernst & Young as the administrators and receivers in connection with Battersea Power Station
  • the U.S. parent company, Blockbuster LLC, on the administration of Blockbuster
  • Eastman Kodak
  • PwC as joint administrators of THE GAME Group and certain of it subsidiaries on the administration and subsequent sale of the business
  • Barclays Bank as lender and then FTI as joint administrators of the mobile technology company Globo PLC
  • the lenders on multiple restructurings of HMV, and then Deloitte, as joint administrators, on the trading administration of HMV and subsequent sale of part of the business
  • the administrators of the wireless telephone operator, Lonica, on the attempted sale of the business
  • PwC, as administrators, as well as the parent company, on the administration of the lingerie chain La Senza
  • the joint provisional liquidators of Northern Offshore Limited on the company’s $340m and NOK150m debt restructuring
  • Bank of America NA and nine other financial institutions in the Parmalat Participações do Brasil Ltda. restructuring deal
  • Vodafone on the purchase of 140 Phones4U stores from PwC who were acting as administrators
  • Ernst & Young as joint administrators of Republic on the administration of the fashion retailer
  • Deloitte as joint administrators on the administration of Waterford Wedgwood and the subsequent sale of the business
  • Deloitte as the joint administrators on the trading administration of Woolworths