Work Area: High-yield debt

A two-week trial is under way in London to consider the validity of the Galapagos group’s heavily contested 2019 restructuring, which left its private equity shareholder in place and high yield noteholders with nothing – and a German insolvency administrator has already asked the court not to make any findings of fact because they could result in inconsistent rulings across Europe.

10 March 2023

Reed Smith has recruited a new partner from Weil Gotshal & Manges in London, who brings with him 20 years of experience advising banks and hedge funds on international and domestic restructurings.

28 February 2023

Contradicting an earlier English ruling, Germany’s Federal Court of Justice has found that heat exchange group Galapagos’ insolvency proceedings and disputes relating to them belong in Dusseldorf post-Brexit, and not in London where the group was wound up in June.

02 February 2023

An eight-day trial is under way in London to decide whether a Cayman fund can bring a claim against Cuba for payment of an almost 40-year-old sovereign debt governed by English law and denominated in now-defunct German Deutschmarks.

25 January 2023

It may be time for an alternative to the rule in Gibbs, says Scott Atkins, president of INSOL International and Australian chair at Norton Rose Fulbright, as he examines recent jurisprudence on the 130-year-old rule from around the common law world, and the potential impact – or lack thereof – that the UK’s contemplated implementation of the UNCITRAL Model Law on the Recognition and Enforcement of Insolvency-Related Judgments will have on its operation.

18 November 2022

A panel presented by the International Insolvency Institute at the American Bankruptcy Institute's London conference took stock of what the UK’s potential adoption of two new UNCITRAL Model Laws could mean for cross-border insolvencies running through England, and for the controversial 19th century Gibbs rule that requires English law-governed debt to be restructured in the UK.

27 October 2022

Brazilian firm Lefosse has bolstered its insolvency offering with the addition of Cescon Barrieu Flesch & Barreto’s former restructuring head Fábio Rosas and two other partners in São Paulo.

18 October 2022

Lower costs of enforcement in the US, speedier, specialised courts in Europe with a “proper” cross-border recognition regime, and Asian regulators that understand distress: a panel of investors from around the world shared their wish lists for an ideal environment to encourage the development of a global rescue financing market fit for the future.

10 August 2022

Updated: Senior creditors of the Galapagos group have obtained a winding up order against one of its entities in England, following a jurisdictional battle between English, German and Luxembourgish courts that was complicated by Brexit and a European Court of Justice case.

30 June 2022

Jurisdictional battles surrounding the restructuring of the Galapagos group have reached the European Court of Justice, in a ruling on which courts have jurisdiction to open insolvency proceedings where there has been centre of main interests shift to the UK, then potentially to Germany, against the backdrop of Brexit.

25 March 2022