Legal 500: Insolvency dominates crunch year
CORPORATE lawyers have lost out during the recession as deal flow has dried up but the economic conditions have been a boon for insolvency specialists.
With premium new-money transactions thin on the ground, distressed deals have come to the fore, according to the industry bible The Legal 500.
A lack of conventional mergers and acquisition work has also prompted corporate lawyers to work alongside finance teams on restructurings and insolvencies said the report which has just published its annual research on the sector.
The Legal 500 recognises Halliwells as now having the largest insolvency department in the North West with seven full-time partners in its Manchester and Liverpool offices.
It boasts representation on many of the asset-based lender and clearing bank panels and in 2008 gained new positions on Lloyds TSB’s and HSBC’s panels.
The report also said Eversheds continues to be instructed on many of the headline insolvencies in the region and identified Addleshaw Goddard as representing distressed investors on a more frequent basis.
Pannone is singled out for its role in a sequence of major retail sector restructurings and administrations, and an appointment to Nationwide Building Society’s business recovery panel.
Although the year has been dominated by insolvency cases, some deals have completed. The report mentions Addleshaw’s role advising the Co-operative Group on its £1.57bn acquisition of Somerfield, and assisting the Cheshire Building Society on its merger with the Nationwide.
Pinsent Masons advised AMEC on the £126.6m sale of its UK wind development business, and has further strengthened its private equity practice with the arrival of Gregg Davison from Hammonds. While Eversheds acted for the Macclesfield engineer Bodycote on the £417m disposal of its testing business to a US private equity fund.
TheBusinessDesk.com is reporting on the key findings from the annual report in a series of daily articles this week.
Tomorrow: Property
Friday: Sport, intellectual property, entertainment and the North West’s leading individuals.
