Akin Gump Advises on Restructuring Honored at Am Law’s Global Legal Awards

(London) – Akin Gump is pleased to announce that the Icelandic bank restructuring, in which it advised the bondholders, has won The American Lawyer’s Global Legal Award and Global Finance Deal of the Year: Private Restructuring. Both were presented at the publication’s Global Legal Awards 2016 in New York.

The awards were made following “the unprecedented restructuring of the Icelandic banking system” that, The American Lawyer notes, took seven years and hundreds of lawyers. Akin Gump represented the creditors of the three major Icelandic commercial banks that had failed in 2008—Glitnir, Kaupthing Bank and Landsbanki—in all aspects of the restructurings. The creditors included investment funds, hedge funds, insurance companies, pension funds and banks

The Akin Gump team advising the creditors was led by London financial restructuring partner Barry Russell. The publication also noted that London litigation partner Mark Dawkins led a separate team devising a strategy to protect the creditors if discussions failed. Describing the plan as one that would freeze the substantial offshore assets of the banks and use them to repay creditors, Mr. Dawkins told The American Lawyer, “It was more designed as a threat to assist us in the negotiations. We would have done it, but it would have been a lose-lose situation for everybody.”

Others on the team included financial restructuring partners Neil Devaney, Liz Osborne, Christian Halàsz, Fred Hodara, Abid Qureshi and Sarah Smith and tax partner Stuart Sinclair. They were supported by many other lawyers across the firm.

This is not the first time Akin Gump has been recognized for its work on the Icelandic banks restructuring. In June, it was named “Restructuring Team of the Year” at The Lawyer Awards 2016. In April, the firm was honored for its work on the “Restructuring Deal of the Year” at IFLR’s European Awards 2016.

Founded in 1945, Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld LLP is a leading international law firm with more than 900 lawyers in offices throughout the United States, Europe, Asia and the Middle East.

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