Our Case Studies

A financial institution was suspected by the United States Senate of being involved in money laundering, drug trafficking, and terrorist financing activities.

The local financial services regulator engaged us as an independent examiner to inspect the Cayman licensee’s compliance with the applicable anti-money laundering and counter financing of terrorism laws and regulations.

The investigation focused on whether the licensee had appropriate and sufficient anti-money laundering policies and procedures and adequate identification procedures.

Various issues arose during the inspection, which we were able to overcome and produce a comprehensive report for the regulator within the deadline imposed.

This is a UK based hedge fund manager that manages various funds in Offshore jurisdictions. Following litigation in the US and a highly publicised landmark ruling, following action by the SEC, it suffered an award in excess of $50m which was followed by a Restraining Order being issued by the US Court. We were appointed to the Company in the UK as Joint Administrators and are now managing the company and pursing a highly complex appeal in the US Courts against the earlier ruling.

A leading energy support services provider approached us to assist with arranging its new debt facilities due to their strategic importance and the challenging market environment.

We were able to assist their finance team with developing the right information to deliver to investors and use our detailed knowledge of bank processes to negotiate the right covenants and banking structure. The funding provided committed lines for further organic growth, as well as additional facilities to support strategic acquisitions.

The new debt package saw the company’s existing debt provider joined by four additional banking partners. In the current market, our ability to work flexibly and cost-effectively allowed the company, rather than its banking partners, to drive the financing package and deliver this efficiently.

This is a hedge fund registered in Guernsey, listed in Amsterdam, but managed from New York & Washington. When it failed in 2008 it had assets and liabilities in excess of $21 billion and its investors had lost all of their $1 billion investment. The liquidation was run out of London working with our offices in Guernsey and Cayman and our alliance members in the US. Following 18 months of intensive investigations we commenced legal action in the US and Guernsey to seek to recover at least $1 billion in funds in order to make good the losses of the creditors and investors. The litigation was extremely complex and hard fought, and is ongoing in both Delaware and Guernsey, with subsidiary actions in New York and Washington DC. We work closely with our principal lawyers in New York, Washington and Hong Kong on this matter, along with UK, Guernsey and Delaware lawyers.

This thought to be the first solvent Scheme of Arrangement for a UK branch of a US corporation. The case was managed out of London. The application was approved on behalf of the US based Company for a formal order to establish the solvent scheme which related to the company’s London operations. It successfully allowed the US insurer to close down its UK business despite having written policies that would have taken 20 years to finalise without the use of the Scheme.

We as financial experts for a US-based hedge fund in their litigation against the Irish Minister for Finance. The dispute centred around the Minister’s decision to use powers granted under the Credit Institutions (Stabilisation) Act 2010 to cram down subordinated bondholders in Allied Irish Bank, whilst inverting traditional creditor hierarchy to leave shareholders intact. The report covered a number of key areas including the importance of creditor hierarchy in capital markets, precedent examples in European bank resolution (e.g. Northern Rock and Bradford & Bingley).

We were retained by the FDIC as financial adviser to the failed Arkansas National Bank Financial (ANB), headquartered in Arkansas. We acted as the loan sale advisor for a $1.2 billion construction and acquisition/development portfolio, ultimately this assignment culminated in a structured transaction sale to a third party.

We were appointed chief restructuring officer (CRO) for Amtrust Mortgage Corporation. Amtrust was a South Eastern US mortgage company that closed over $1.3 billion of mortgage loans in 2006.

We were retained as CRO for the business and charged with running the successful wind-down of the business, including the funding of over $40 million in committed loans and an orderly liquidation of over $120 million in funded mortgage loans and other company assets.

Additionally we were retained as CRO and financial advisor to Amtrust Financial Corporation and related entities in their Chapter 11 filings, The companies, based out of Ohio, have operations in insurance, securities, banking and real estate investments. We have assisted with more than 360 sale transactions, prepared cash flow and related variance analysis, managed tax deconsolidation issues, performed analysis of existing real estate assets while advising on an ongoing basis, as well as reviewing SOFA’s and bankruptcy schedules.

We were appointed by creditors/investors of Traditional Values Management. Our task was to recover and realise the assets of this registered Managed Investment Scheme across four Australian states. These assets included pine forests, water rights, debtor books and physical real estate. Our work involved complex investigation and litigation against numerous parties including auditors, accountants, directors, and creditors for the benefit of the scheme creditors and 350 unit holders.

We successfully realised the majority of the assets with, litigation against professional advisors still ongoing.

We were appointed to act for the beneficiaries of a high profile Ponzi scheme.

This was a major instruction and involved locating, assessing and verifying beneficiaries and their claims. After this intense process we recovered and distributed $A26M to numerous beneficiaries located around the world but primarily in Japan.