GRR Spotlights Noble Group’s Restructuring, Quotes Akin Gump Partners Involved in Repping Creditors
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In “‘The epitome of a cross-border restructuring’: Noble Unpacked,” Global Restructuring Review (GRR) focuses on the $3.5 billion reorganization of commodities trader Noble Group, which was completed in December 2018.
Akin Gump acted as lead English, Hong Kong and U.S. counsel to an ad hoc group of senior unsecured Noble creditors, with, as the article notes, lawyers in the firm’s London, Hong Kong and New York offices working alongside co-counsel to lend their knowledge and experience to the representation.
One of them, London restructuring partner Barry Russell, is quoted regarding the challenges beyond the size and geographic scale of the company. He says, “Many more obstacles arose, including an activist shareholder campaign, the loss of the company’s listing in Singapore, various litigation proceedings and the commencement of regulatory investigations.” Russell added that Noble was “the perfect illustration of how complex and fluid cross-border restructurings can be, and really underscores the importance of innovation and flexibility.”
Hong Kong restructuring partner Naomi Moore recalls, “From the outset, there was already a myriad of complex legal and structural challenges for us to navigate. In many ways, Noble was the epitome of a cross-border restructuring with vast inherent challenges and complexity.” Moore enumerates as examples of this complexity the fact that the group was incorporated, listed and HQ’d in three separate jurisdictions; had vessels moving worldwide; and had complex derivative and financial assets, as well as assets and investments in jurisdictions as far removed as Jamaica and Indonesia.
London corporate partner Vance Chapman discusses the importance of restoring the confidence and support of Noble’s trading partners in order to preserve a core valuable business after the restructuring: “These key commercial challenges meant that time was of the essence, but at the same time, that more than a ‘quick fix’ was required. Noble needed a holistic restructuring that would restore that confidence and give it a viable future.”
Discussing the impact of the Noble restructuring, Moore says, “The Noble case was very high profile and it covered a lot of bases in terms of scheme and restructuring issues such as consent and work fees, releases, asset transfers etc. so it is only nature that it will have some influence on other cases.
Similarly, Chapman notes, “Although each case will be different and will have its own nuances, I would expect that other companies that have issued subordinate ‘out of the money’ debt instruments and anticipate hold outs, would at least pause to consider whether they could utilise a similar structure to Noble.”
Akin Gump was proud to receive a number of recognitions for its work on the Noble Group restructuring, including in the IFLR Asia Pacific Awards 2019 (learn more here), The Asia Legal Awards (learn more here) and The Times Best Law Firms 2020 (learn more here).
