The practice can act on behalf of a debtor but also on behalf of creditors and shareholders. It may also be called upon to act as counsel for court-appointed administrators if these latter request that it take action within the framework of a specific assignment, to protect their own rights, or the interests of collective insolvency proceedings.
Specific expertise
- Analysis of firms’ difficulties in conjunction with management and the usual auditors of the firm.
- Assistance to company directors with implementing the envisaged restructuring measures and with preparing projected operating accounts following restructuring.
- Preparatory work for the appropriate proceedings – declarations concerning suspensions of payments; applications to instigate court-ordered protection proceedings; drafting of motions for the appointment of an ad hoc court-appointed administrator or of a mediator.
- Assistance to company directors with their negotiations with the firm’s main suppliers, credit institutions, and main manufacturing and/or commercial partners.
- Drafting of company turnaround and mediation procedures; preparation of motions for approval by either the presiding judge or the court.
- Handling of the monitoring period and of relations with the firm’s main partners, suppliers and creditors, court-appointed representatives and commercial courts.
- Assistance to company directors in respect of the ways and means in which they can consult with creditors.
- Negotiations regarding the details set out in the restructuring plans (e.g. job-saving schemes (Plans de Sauvegarde de l’Emploi (PSEs)), business continuation plans, plans to sell all or part of assets) submitted to credit institutions and suppliers.
- Legal monitoring of firms when restructuring plans are adopted.
- Preparation of the necessary legal documents for implementing restructuring plans.
- Assistance to investors engaged in an inorganic growth process (M&As) and the acquisition of shares in or of the assets of distressed companies (review of documents available in data rooms; the drafting of acquisition offers; negotiations with collective insolvency proceedings bodies and with strategic suppliers; assistance to prospective buyers in the deliberating chambers).
- Preparation of instruments, which transfer ownership of the firm or of single assets within the context of a turnaround acquisition or court-ordered liquidation.