Restructuring and Insolvency
Our restructuring and insolvency practice encompasses a core team of specialist finance and corporate restructuring and insolvency experts including a qualified insolvency practitioner, who offer comprehensive and expert advice across a wide range of industry sectors in a constantly evolving legal market.
Our team is known for its ability to work seamlessly with our banking, M&A, tax, real estate, commercial, antitrust, pensions, employment, regulatory and funds teams, to advise in relation to any challenges which may arise on a restructuring.
Our practice covers a broad client base, including credit funds, sponsors, special situations funds, financial institutions, corporate borrowers, boards of directors and insolvency practitioners. This means that we can offer our clients valuable insights into the approaches of key stakeholders across the capital structure, which enables us to develop and deliver innovative and practical solutions.
We have particularly strong sector expertise in retail, leisure and hospitality (including hotels and restaurants) and real estate more generally as well as professional services, regulated consumer financial services and healthcare.
Our specialist expertise includes:
- restructurings: Advising debtors, senior and subordinated secured and unsecured creditors (including creditor committees and individual lenders, particularly credit and hedge funds) and directors in connection with all aspects of domestic and cross-border corporate restructurings. This includes solvent and insolvent group re-organisations, schemes of arrangement, restructuring plans, debt refinancings and reschedulings, covenant re-sets, debt-for-equity swaps, new money injections and rescue equity issues (including listed securities);
- distressed M&A: Working alongside our highly rated private equity and M&A lawyers, assisting investors in evaluating and executing opportunities for the acquisition of distressed assets, including through loan-to-own investments, accelerated sales and acquisitions out of insolvency processes;
- insolvency proceedings: Advising insolvency practitioners and creditors at all levels of the capital structure on structuring and implementing insolvency proceedings including administration, receivership, company voluntary arrangements, liquidation and the co-ordination of cross-border proceedings;
- distressed and special situations investments: Advising investors on structuring and implementing investments in distressed multi-tiered capital structures, drawing on the expertise of our private equity and leveraged finance specialists, in particular, with regard to intercreditor arrangements. (including super senior – unitranche structures);
- distressed debt and claims trading and portfolio acquisitions: Working with market participants across the full life cycle of debt and claims trades and loan portfolio deals, advising on the diligencing, structuring and negotiating of such transactions as well as the work-out of distressed positions; and
- restructuring and insolvency litigation: Advising on all litigious aspects of today’s complex, multi-jurisdictional restructurings and insolvencies, including issues and disputes arising out of intercreditor disputes, contested reorganisation plans, administrations, receiverships and CVAs.
