Our Case Studies

This case involved the successful rescue and sale of Southampton Football Club – Southampton FC had been in financial difficulty for some time due to its failure to regain top-flight status coupled with overheads too great for a Championship team. Under review of its bankers, the club desperately needed to reduce its costs and increase cash flow. The bank approached our team in London alliance member to advise the directors on a plan to save the club.

We implemented a radical restructuring plan leading to a successful sale of both the club and related assets. A hands-on, partner-led approach meant the Club survived, saving jobs and benefiting the community. Key elements of this success can be summarised as: focussed initiatives to raise cash; strong decision around removal of management; consensual restructuring around major creditors; winning creditor support; use of media to send required message; determination to achieve sale; and ultimately, creditor’s payment.

In 2013, PLUTA Rechtsanwalts GmbH succeeded in selling the Göppingen-based toy manufacturer Gebr. Märklin & Cie GmbH to a member company of the Simba-Dickie Group. After Märklin, a traditional German enterprise, filed for insolvency in March 2009, we pursued a course of restructuring and brought the model railway manufacturer back on the road to success. The insolvency Administrator, Michael Pluta, managed to fully meet the creditors’ claims. The payout to all the creditors has in the meantime reached a sum in the high-eight-digit range.

In the case of Geiger technologies GmbH, PLUTA Rechtsanwalts GmbH succeeded in selling company shares to the Dutch investment company HTP. Geiger technologies supplies the car industry with components and generated revenues of approximately € 100 million. The insolvency Administrator, Dr. Martin Prager, succeeded in turning the company around. The Local Court of Weilheim had opened insolvency proceedings on 1 February 2009. Proceedings ended in mid-2015.

We were appointed Receiver by the court for the companies and related properties on a court motion brought by a number of the property mortgagees in North America.

We took possession and control of the properties and underlying businesses and continued operations in the businesses that were currently in operation to preserve as much value as possible. Included in the continued operations were four retirement homes, five commercial properties, two private schools and daycares, two multi-unit apartment buildings, a golf course and a number of properties under development and/or were vacant buildings and land. Once all the assets were stabilized, a court-approved sales process, agreeable by all the relevant mortgagees, was undertaken to sell the assets and/or properties.

Globally, the receivership encompasses 12 legal entities which owned 24 properties. The Court Order provided for ring fencing among all the real properties and businesses resulting in a separate estate and operating and liquidating strategy for each property.

At time of writing the receivership is ongoing, however we have sold but one of the properties and the mortgagees and secured lenders have been repaid in full.

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 advised and provided interim management resources to TSX listed AgJunction Inc., assisting the company to implement a strategic corporate restructuring and operational turnaround. This resulted in a successful shift to refocus on technology leadership within the agricultural industry. Through the period of Farber’s engagement, the company’s share price increased by approximately 70%.

Towards the end of 2012, the Board of Directors initiated a restructuring mandate with the directive to implement a profit-focused corporate strategy under the leadership of the CEO.

BTG Global Advisory worked with the Board and leadership to focus on three overarching priorities: returning the company to its core agricultural business, streamlining and simplifying the business, and adopting market-driven innovation.

As a result of our involvement savings from the overall restructuring were approximately $7 million per annum, which was achieved through improved gross margins and reduced operating overhead.

The corporate restructuring incorporated a number of inter-related initiatives, including the disposal of the non-agriculture-related business, streamlining the organization with a new management team, relocating the head office closer to its customer base in the heartland of the North American agricultural industry, outsourcing manufacturing operations, closing overlapping administrative offices and reducing overhead, rationalizing products and SKUs, and a renaming and rebranding.