Eldwick Law’s specialist disputes team have extensive experience of advising insolvency practitioners, secured and unsecured creditors, lenders and borrowers on all manner of contentious insolvency, restructuring and distressed situations.
We combine technical expertise with an in depth understanding of the insolvency process, to ensure that clients’ interests are protected at the outset of a distressed situation. We can advise on future disputes, right through to bringing Court claims as a result of an insolvency.
We provide concise, strategic advice to distressed companies, their directors and CEOs, as well as to creditors on how to protect their interests in this technical area of company law.
We work closely with leading forensic accountants, investigators, and insolvency practitioners to trace and recover assets, which overlaps with our Civil Fraud expertise.
Representative cases:
- Re Gate Ventures plc [2020] EWHC 709 (Ch) – Acted for various shareholders in obtaining an administration order against a company that had raised over £24.5 million from nearly 3,000 mainly Chinese shareholders. The case attracted significant media attention as the company was chaired by former BBC boss Lord Grade and had provided an unexplained loan of £500,000 to the Duchess of York, Sarah Ferguson. After successfully obtaining an order for an administrator to be appointed, we investigated claims against the company to trace and recover the misappropriated investments.
- Bruno Arboit -v- Kei Kin Hung [2024] EWHC 3399 (Ch) – Acted for the Respondent, a very high-net worth individual from Hong Kong, in the recognition of a Hong Kong bankruptcy of over £1 billion under the Cross-Border Insolvency Regulations 2006. Successfully resisted under Article 21 of the UNCITRAL Model Law on the basis that the Joint Trustees had used material potentially in contempt of court.
- Advising an international Kazakh based oil and gas drilling company in misfeasance and derivative claims against a formerly listed FTSE 100 oil and gas exploration company.
- Acting for a very high net worth individual on jurisdictional challenges to a bankruptcy petition, in relation to claims in excess of £15 million
- Acting for a judgment creditor of a significant arbitration award in enforcement proceedings, resulting in a winding up petition being made against the debtor company, which held assets stated to be in excess of £100 million, and then obtaining a bankruptcy order, and pursuing the debtor through the insolvency process.
- Obtaining judgment for fraud on behalf of a group of franchisees against a major fitness franchisor. Pierced the corporate veil, and obtained judgment against the former CEO of the franchisor, and obtained an Insolvency Administration Order against the estate of the former CEO, and advising on claims under section 421A of the Insolvency Act 1986.