Akin Gump Wins Restructuring Team of the Year at The Lawyer Awards 2016

(London) – Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld LLP is delighted to announce it was named “Restructuring Team of the Year” at The Lawyer Awards 2016 held at the Intercontinental Hotel at the O2 in London last night.

The firm’s financial restructuring team is recognized as one of the leading bondholder practices globally, with dedicated restructuring teams in London, Frankfurt, Hong Kong and the United States, and is well known for advising creditors on the restructuring of complex corporate debt. Clients include debt investors, insurance companies, pension funds, hedge funds and specialist investment funds.

This award was made following Akin Gump’s eight-year representation of the bondholders of the three major Icelandic commercial banks that failed in 2008—Glitnir, Landsbanki and Kaupthing—in all aspects of the restructurings of the failed bank estates.

The failure of the three Icelandic banks, the long delay in agreeing bank resolution measures and the impact on Iceland made these cases among the largest and most complex financial sector restructurings to arise from the 2008 financial crisis.

The Akin Gump team was actively involved in all phases of the restructuring process—and litigation planning—on behalf of the bondholder group since 2008 and participated in the informal creditors’ committees set up by the three estates.  The restructurings closed in April 2016.

Akin Gump, together with the financial advisors to the three failed bank estates, led the consultation process with the Icelandic government that paved the way for the successful restructurings of the three estates under Icelandic law composition (restructuring) agreements.  Akin Gump was also centrally involved in negotiating and documenting the composition arrangements with representatives of the three estates and their advisors.

The Akin Gump team advising the bondholders was led by Akin Gump London restructuring partner Barry Russell throughout the engagement. London litigation partner Mark Dawkins led the team advising on all litigation aspects of the restructuring.

They were supported by restructuring partners Neil Devaney (London), Liz Osborne (London), Christian Halàsz (Frankfurt), Fred Hodara (New York), litigation partner Abid Qureshi (New York), finance partner Sarah Smith (London) and tax partner Stuart Sinclair (London), and dozens of other lawyers around the firm.

To read the full profile of Akin Gump's win in The Lawyer, please click here.

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

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