Restructuring, Collective Proceedings

Devise effective crisis recovery optimising collection for the client while ensuring the durability of the debtor’s business activity.

BMHAVOCATS’ Restructuring team advises a French and foreign clientele on a full range of topics: from restructuring to the liquidation of companies in distress. We assist primarily creditors (particularly banks), potential investors (companies or funds), shareholders and managers, foreign administrative receivers as well as businesses in difficulty. Our expertise is distinguished in particular by our multicultural approach, which allows us to deal with subjects with an international dimension and involving several jurisdictions.

We support our clients in a proactive manner in negotiations on preventive procedures (ad hoc mandate, conciliation) and we reflect creatively on crisis resolution and on the valorisation of assets.

In the context of judicial proceedings (safeguarding, receivership and liquidation), we assist our clients at every stage of the proceedings, and we represent them before the courts.

Our complementary know-how in mergers and acquisitions, financing and litigation enables us to to develop practical, innovative and effective solutions.

OUR EXPERTISE REGROUP

Preparation
for the opening of various proceedings and support to debtors throughout collective proceedings
Negotiation
on behalf of debtors or creditors under ad hoc mandate and conciliation proceedings
Renegotiation
and structuring of financial debt (real estate or corporate)
Support
to banks in banking pools
Negotiation
and implementation of trusts
Representation
and debt collection for creditors, particularly foreign banks, support in creditor committees
Declaration
of claims, actions for recovery

Auditor missions
during safeguarding, receivership or liquidation proceedings
Representation
of particularly German-speaking, foreign judicial administrators in French collective proceedings
Development
of safeguarding and recovery plans
The takeover
of businesses in distress (sale plans)
Litigation
(invalidity proceedings; shareholders’ or management liability)
Piloting and strategy
for debt collection on behalf of creditors and their insurers in complex cases of cross-border insolvency

RECENT MISSIONS

Petroplus: Assistance, advice, negotiation and representation of the main shareholder (Petroplus Marketing AG, originally listed in Zurich) and its Swiss liquidators as part of the reorganization and subsequent liquidation proceedings of an oil refinery with the setting up of an oil stock management trust.

Nice-Matin: Advice, assistance, and representation of the bank creditor who financed the newspaper’s printing press as part of the transfer of assets to SCIC Nice-Matin.

Support to German bank within a pool for the negotiation of the bank debt of a portfolio of office buildings in the context of a conciliation procedure with the setting up of a trust.

Support to a German bank within a banking pool for the restructuring of the debt of a European printing group.

Advising a German bank on the strategy for the restructuring of a debt of a French real estate company, subsidiary of a German listed real estate group in insolvency proceedings (debt-to-equity swap).

Support to a German bank within a pool for the restructuring of the debt of a large infrastructure project.

Assistance to a credit insurer having insured oil supplies in the context of insolvency proceedings in Denmark and Singapore.

Assistance and advice to a banking pool in the renegotiation of a loan for the financing of a shopping center.

Comprehensive strategic and legal advice for the closure of industrial sites in France.

Aristophil: Support to and representation of an Austrian insolvency administrator in the context of a receivership procedure of a French company that marketed historical manuscripts to 17,000 investors.

Support to a British creditor in the context of secondary proceedings in France of a German company: challenging the capacity of French courts to open secondary proceedings at the request of the German provisional administrator, defending the client against actions for nullity of securities taken as security for a loan, defending the client in the context of an action for liability brought by the French liquidator.

Strategic consultation on the risks of liability of the German parent company in the event of bankruptcy proceedings against its French subsidiary.