If you're facing a time of personal or corporate financial crisis you need advice from someone who listens, who understands your specific issues and deals with them in a supportive and sensitive manner.

Advice from someone who can draw on years of experience in this area to assess all available options and then make sensible recommendations on how best to deal with your financial crisis. This may sometimes require a formal insolvency process.

As a creditor, you need advisors who will maximise recoverability and leave no stone unturned in tracing assets or funds.

We have the capability to undertake insolvencies ranging from individuals through to large, complex group structures with cross-border dynamics. Internationally, our practitioners are recognised market experts, having led cases that have developed insolvency law and pioneered new models such as working on a contingent basis.

Our practitioners have extensive experience of recovery in the Caribbean, Middle East, Africa, Europe and Asia, and have worked on insolvencies involving large-scale fraudulent activities. We are supported by colleagues in member firms in all the major offshore and onshore centres. Our stakeholders range from individuals and businesses to government agencies and major financial institutions.

We offer a partner led, integrated service that encompasses: options assessment and cost analysis, valuation, stakeholder management, tax planning, detailed step plans and delivery of the insolvency process.

Our clients choose us because:

  • we work in a way that is sensitive to our clients’ individual circumstances
  • we provide innovative solutions to protect and create value including Cross Border Solutions and Schemes of Arrangement
  • we have market leading teams in many the key offshore financial centres (such as the Cayman Islands, the BVI and the Channel Islands). In combination with our broader international presence, this allows us to advise on situations involving the most complicated group structures
  • Internationally, our appointment takers are recognised as leading global experts
  • Our JV partner has the largest team of asset-tracing and recovery specialists in the UK.

Our solutions

  • Corporate insolvency
  • Fraud insolvency
  • Complex and international insolvency
  • Personal insolvency

Corporate insolvency

Sometimes a business suffers an adverse event which impacts its ability to continue trading. And sometimes a solvent sale proves unsuccessful or a turnaround just isn't an option.

It is important that advice is obtained from someone who understands the unique situation of each business and can work with the company and its stakeholders to devise and implement solutions.

Where a business cannot be saved or when a formal insolvency process is required in order to effect a restructuring, we provide advice to insolvent companies, their creditors and other stakeholders to protect assets and maximise recoveries. Business disposals in such a scenario are often delivered through an Accelerated merger & acquisition (AMA) process (see below).

We utilise formal insolvency tools to protect value for one or more shareholders.  These tools are:

  • Receiverships / Receiver and Manager appointments
  • Examinerships
  • Compulsory and Creditors’ Voluntary Liquidations

Receiverships

Receiverships are a process for a secured lender to recover its indebtedness in the event of default. Provided the lender’s security includes a floating charge, they can appoint a Receiver/Manager of the borrower.

Crucially, this means that the receiver/manager has the power to manage the business, which provides the control necessary to stabilise the business and take steps to improve its viability. We often find that a perfectly viable business is being strangled by an insolvent corporate entity, and a receivership affords the opportunity for significant restructuring to save the business, including in some cases a sale of the business as a going concern.

Whilst a receivership appointment is often a last resort for the lender to recover its debt, we often find that there is still an opportunity for a consensual solution. Our approach is always therefore to explore the feasibility of such a solution with both sides and seek to bridge the gap, particularly where it is clear that a breakdown in communications has led to the appointment in the first place. A constructive attitude from both sides, with the catalyst of a professional and competent Receiver/Manager, has shown on numerous occasions that more drastic and damaging outcomes for the lender can be avoided more often than not.

Fraud insolvency and Complex International Insolvency

We trace and recover funds for clients who have suffered a financial loss.

Internationally, in the last three years we have recovered over €200 million of hidden and misappropriated assets for clients ranging from foreign governments, tax authorities, claimants in major frauds, banks, insurers as well as other listed and non-listed corporates.

Local and international capability

We use insolvency proceedings, court appointed receiverships and other civil procedures. We have extensive experience of retrieving assets from jurisdictions in the Caribbean, Middle East, Africa, Europe and Asia, as well as the offshore centres.

Our team also specialises in giving advice and taking formal insolvency appointments in relation to businesses with complex, international affairs.

We have experience of multi-jurisdictional insolvencies, foreign recognition, information gathering tools and understanding of enforcement that allows us to optimise outcomes for stakeholders.

We operate under a number of fee structures, often working on a contingent basis or with the benefit of third party funding. This means we bear the risk of the investigation, and only charge a fee in cases where a recovery is made. In many cases, our work represents an opportunity for clients to turn write offs into revenues.

Our solutions

  • Corporate intelligence and asset research
  • Digital forensic extraction and analysis
  • Fraud investigations, to minimise the consequences of fraud
  • Tracing misappropriated and hidden assets
  • Strategies of international asset recovery
  • Our forensic IT service can also:

-     identify and retrieve information held on electronic media

-     find hidden data

-     recreate critical, computer related communications

-     access hard-to-find or apparently lost data

-     search and manage e-mails and databases

-     present computer forensic findings

Personal Insolvency

Whether you are an organisation or individual, debt continues to be a key challenge.

We are a leading provider of personal insolvency services, delivering practical solutions in a sensitive manner, maximising recoveries for creditors or by helping individuals seeking for appropriate debt relief solutions.

Our team of dedicated specialists provide solutions and advice to both creditors and individual debtors.