Squire Patton Boggs has hired partners Charlotte Møller, and Monika Lorenzo-Perez into its Restructuring & Insolvency Practice. They join the firm from Brown Rudnick LLP, where Ms. Møller was head of its European Bankruptcy & Corporate Restructuring Practice Group. The new partners are accompanied by director Helena Clarke and senior associates Rebecca Terrace and Sabina Khan.
“These hires represent a significant addition into our global team at a time when we anticipate that the current economic climate is likely to cause higher levels of distress across many industries and the restructuring market will pick up,” said Stephen Lerner global chair of the firm’s Restructuring & Insolvency Practice Group. “Charlotte, Monika, and their team bring significant expertise handling complex national and cross-border restructurings and insolvencies and will add even greater depth to our global offering to clients.”
European managing partner Jonathan Jones said, “Charlotte and Monika are highly regarded lawyers whose technical knowledge and experience complement that of our existing Restructuring & Insolvency practice, whilst creating synergies with our private equity and financial services teams, which we have also grown substantially in recent months.
“With practitioners of their calibre, we are well-positioned to support new and existing clients with whatever their financial and corporate needs are in the future.”
Commenting on her team’s arrival, Ms. Møller said: “Squire’s substantial UK presence across four offices, coupled with the firm’s extensive global reach and reputation for handling sophisticated restructuring matters made the firm a unique and compelling destination from which to serve our clients and grow our practice. We are excited to join the team and collaborate with our new colleagues around the world.”
Squire Patton Boggs global Restructuring & Insolvency Practice has more than 130 lawyers in 36 offices in 15 countries collaborating on domestic and cross-border restructuring matters.
About the team:
Ms. Møller has a broad restructuring and insolvency practice that includes advising in the restructuring of defaulting credit facilities for both lenders and borrowers, enforcement of security, representing administrators and insolvency practitioners in all manner of distress, including schemes of arrangement, restructuring plans and prepack sales, and generally advising chief restructuring officers and directors of distressed companies. She has recently worked on several cross-border restructurings, primarily in the shipping, airline, energy, and natural resources industries. She advised the Civil Aviation Authority for several years on the financial and operational ring fencing of regulated travel groups; this has included work on the restructuring and eventual collapse of Monarch and the restructuring and liquidation of Thomas Cook.
Ms. Møller also represents clients regarding the enforcement of security over UK assets, particularly in the context of the sale and purchase of non-performing loan portfolios. She has experience with bespoke lending situations, including litigation funding and short term, high risk lending.
Ms. Lorenzo-Perez’s broad practice includes complex financial restructuring, where she has acted for both lenders and borrowers, and which have involved wider group and cross-border restructurings of both distressed and non-distressed companies, across a variety of sectors including retail, energy, infrastructure, and most recently hotels and hospitality. She works with turnaround directors and directors of distressed companies, including for example the turnaround directors of subsidiaries in the Lehman Brothers group on various matters including settlement of its pension scheme, the wind down of a sale of an asset management company, rationalisation of group structures, sale of assets, and general corporate governance advice to directors and CROs.
In addition, she advises on formal insolvency, acting for administrators, liquidators, and receivers on their appointment and the disposal of assets, and providing ongoing advice during the course of the insolvency, including court applications. Ms. Lorenzo-Perez acts for administrators in relation to accelerated sales of a business, for example advising the administrators of Bernard Matthews in relation to the prepack sale of the business and assets of the company. She also regularly acts for creditors in planning enforcement options and strategy around such enforcement.