A natural evolution of our firm's practice over the past decade has been the development of an inter-disciplinary approach to dealing with businesses in financial difficulty and their stakeholders. This area of practice has developed out of our financing, securities, tax, commercial real estate and litigation practices and often draws upon the expertise and experience and environmental practices to achieve an appropriate result for our clients. Our focus has been on providing creative and responsible solutions to restructure businesses and their balance sheets; we view receivership and bankruptcy as only a small component of this practice, which is either used as a tool to effect business results or as a last resort when all else has failed.

We assist in evaluating the rights and negotiating positions of our clients, then using our deal-making and strategic skills, we identify appropriate financing and M&A alternatives and negotiate compromises designed to achieve a "win-win" result for all stakeholders. If necessary, we use the auspices of the courts and insolvency legislation to implement or impose a result which assists our client in achieving both its business objective and its timetable.  Several of the restructurings we have been involved with have had significant multinational components and, in this regard, we have worked closely with insolvency practitioners and courts in other jurisdictions to achieve a coordinated result. This has allowed us to develop a working understanding of U.S. and U.K. insolvency law and procedure which has been helpful in advising our clients.

Our restructuring and insolvency practice focuses primarily on business in financial difficulty.  We have acted for:

• Debtors;
• Institutional secured and unsecured lenders;
• Non-institutional lenders;
• Bondholders;
• Lessors;
• Trade creditors;
• Employee and management groups;
• Boards and committees of directors;
• Shareholders;
• Investors;
• Other parties who are directly or indirectly affected by a company in financial difficulty.

As a result of acting on all sides of these transactions, we have an understanding of how various stakeholders are likely to behave.  This allows us to predict results and build consensus.

We have been involved in numerous transactions in which the use of tax-driven instruments such as distress preferred shares and income debentures has proven to be useful in improving the cash flow and economic viability of a business.

Some of the circumstances in which these have been used have been novel and precedent setting.  We acted in two of the cases in which creditors have used the Companies' Creditors Arrangement Act to initiate a restructuring where negotiations had proven to be ineffective. Once again, this approach was considered by many to be both unorthodox and unique but was instrumental in achieving our clients' business objectives.

As a result of acting for numerous lending syndicates and bondholder groups as well as agents and trustees, we have developed considerable perspective on inter-lender dynamics and disputes. We have often dealt with issues arising out of secondary trading in distressed debt.

Senior members are repeatedly recognized in the Canadian Legal LEXPERT Directory, The LEXPERT/American Lawyer Guide to the Leading 500 Lawyers in Canada, Global Counsel 3000 for their work in financial restructuring and insolvency. Members of our practice have delivered many papers in Canada and elsewhere dealing with issues arising in complex restructurings and, in addition, we frequently lecture on this subject at Canadian law schools. 

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