Insolvency / Reorganizations
Our expertise
Our expertise
We provide assistance to interested parties at all stages of insolvency proceedings, up to and including bankruptcy. We have earned recognition for the added value we create based on the following triumvirate: interdisciplinary lawyers with an understanding of the financial aspects of bankruptcy cases and the benefit of our other legal specialists’ expertise, particularly in the fields of employment, tax, and financial law.
What we do
We assist distressed companies in the following matters:
- Reorganizations: Mergers, split-ups, spin-offs, elaboration of severance plans (PSE), mass-layoff accompanying measures, voluntary retirement/resignation schemes
- Prevention: Assessments, analysis of creditors’ securities, determination of the state of cessation of payments, setting-up of cash flow tools, negotiations with public and private creditors, ad-hoc administration proceedings, conciliation, pre-insolvency proceedings, including the drawing-up of all relevant legal and judicial acts
- Management: Organization of business recovery or liquidation proceedings, liaising with court-appointed officials, hotline to managers, assistance with supplier, customer, and employee relations
We assist takeover bidders as follows:
- Carrying out legal audits
- Preparing and drawing up takeover offers
- Conducting takeover hearings
- Drafting and negotiating of all related instruments
We assist creditors with the following:
- Filing proofs of debt
- Conducting actions in rem
- Performing or terminating outstanding contracts
- Calling on securities
- Dealing with subcontractors’ direct actions
We assist company managers following bankruptcy proceedings:
- Mismanagement-based liability claims
- Criminal and tax-related lawsuits
We assist court-appointed officials (trustees, receivers, etc.):
- Acting as supervisors on behalf of creditors
- Drawing up fiduciary contracts
Among our files
Judicial business recovery and liquidation
- Counsel to the French subsidiary of a Swedish airline company for the successive filing for bankruptcy, judicial recovery, and liquidation proceedings and their consequences on employment (about fifteen actions brought before the French employment tribunal) and in a dispute concerning preferential payment
- Legal assistance to several SMEs to avoid defaulting or to file for bankruptcy
Business takeover
- Counsel to a CAC-40 company for the preparation of an offer to take over an important group in the paper industry
- Counsel to an Irish company for the acquisition of golf courses in France
- Counsel to a distributor of home supplies for the takeover of a competing store chain
Ad-hoc proceedings and conciliation
- Counsel to a subcontractor in the automotive industry (dispute ended by successful conciliation)
- Counsel to an industrial corporation and its managers for the restructuration of an LBO (ad-hoc proceedings followed by successful conciliation)
- Counsel to an industrial corporation in conciliation proceedings with its bankers
Counsel to creditors
- Representation of an American group in the bankruptcy proceedings of a Peugeot automotive subcontractor before the Commercial Court in Nantes for claims totalling 2 million euros: takeover of outstanding contracts, subcontractor’s direct action, aggregation of claims with a factoring company
- Follow-up on behalf of a French company on the action of local liquidators in the foreign bankruptcy proceedings of an investment fund located in the Bahamas
Counsel to managers
- Dismissal of actions against and acquittal of former managers facing liability actions (mismanagement, fraudulent bankruptcy) and heavy penalties (personal bankruptcy, management ban, etc.)
- Dismissal of an action against a manager of the French subsidiary of an English group facing a liability action on grounds of mismanagement (the court-appointed official was ordered to pay damages on grounds of unjustified proceedings in first instance and on appeal)
- Representation of former managers of a CAC-40 company and of former managers of its (IT) subsidiary facing liability actions on grounds of mismanagement before the Paris Court of Appeal