Restructuring and Insolvency

We provide our clients with clear and strategic advice when they face significant commercial pressures and complex restructuring challenges. We help stakeholders across the capital structure to protect value and manage risk across every stage of the process.

Our experienced team brings together our specialists in finance and corporate restructuring, including a qualified insolvency practitioner.

We support stakeholders throughout the entire lifecycle of restructuring and insolvency, including credit funds, sponsors, special situations funds and investors, financial institutions, corporate borrowers, boards of directors and insolvency practitioners.

We have particularly strong sector experience in retail, leisure and hospitality (including hotels and restaurants), real estate, professional services, regulated consumer financial services and healthcare.

Our team advises on a broad range of international transactions, including:

• restructurings, advising on solvent and insolvent group reorganisations, restructuring plans, schemes of arrangement, debt refinancings, covenant resets and rescue financings;
• distressed M&A, supporting acquisitions of distressed assets, including loan-to-own strategies and accelerated sales;
• insolvency proceedings, including structuring and implementing administrations, receiverships, CVAs, liquidations, and cross-border processes;
• distressed and special situations investments, advising on complex capital structures and intercreditor arrangements;
• distressed debt and claims trading, guiding clients through the full lifecycle of debt and claims transactions; and
• restructuring and insolvency litigation, including disputes arising out of intercreditor disputes, contested restructuring plans, administrations, receiverships and CVAs.

Work highlights include advising:

• Dobbies Garden Centres on its restructuring plan under Part 26A of the Companies Act 2006 and related amendments to its debt facilities with Ares;
• Superdry plc on its parallel restructuring plan, debt refinancing and capital raising measures;
• Independent Builders Merchant Group on its restructuring plan in conjunction with a take-control transaction by Ares and Farallon;
• OpCapita on its loan-to-own acquisition of the UK business and assets of the retailer GAME Digital, its operational turnaround, a ground-breaking dispute with landlords and on its exit by way of flotation;
• numerous credit fund and special opportunities clients regarding restructurings of their borrowers, in sectors including electrical automotive, IT services and hotels, by assisting with take-control transactions both consensually and via the use of enforcement procedures in both the UK and overseas;
• Warwick Capital Partners on all aspects of debts and claims trading and in relation to the purchase of distressed commodity finance loans and the establishment of a related commodity finance platform;
• various investee companies of Alchemy Special Opportunities in relation to bolt-on acquisitions, including out of administration; and
• a challenger bank in relation to the CVA of a restaurant chain borrower and the pre-packaged administration of a hospitality sector borrower.