Over more than 20 years Peter Declercq has represented a wide variety of clients (creditors, debtors and other stakeholders) in both contentious and non-contentious Special Situations. He is an English solicitor with a Dutch background who is also licensed to practice in New York and the Netherlands. Peter specialises in restructuring, cross-border insolvency and distressed investments and clients benefit from his common law and civil law expertise which greatly assist them in finding the bespoke solution a Special Situation typically requires.

As an INSOL International Fellow, he is also an active member of INSOL International working in various roles alongside The World Bank and UNCITRAL. He regularly speaks, lectures and writes on the subject of global insolvency law.

Peter provides comprehensive counsel to distressed investors on all aspects of the life cycle of their investments, as well as “zone of insolvency” counselling to sponsors and boards (or individual directors) of companies or financial institutions that find themselves in a Special Situation. He has represented formal and ad hoc creditor groups in multinational out-of-court restructuring transactions and in formal insolvency proceedings. In addition, he has experience advising buyers and sellers of distressed assets (including non-performing loan (or NPL) portfolios) throughout Europe and beyond.

With over 20 years of experience as a solicitor, Patrick Elliot has represented a very wide variety of clients in Special Situations. He began his legal career as a financial litigator at a leading city firm becoming a commercial litigator and thereafter an insolvency litigator. After a number of years acting for creditors, debtors and office-holders, Patrick moved to a US firm where he advised on larger scale cross-border restructurings, predominantly acting for bondholder-creditors.

While Patrick is more usually involved in contentious matters, he has advised on many insolvency processes including CVAs, Schemes of Arrangement and matters relating to the EC Regulation and the Model Law on Cross-Border Insolvency. Patrick acts for debtors and their advisors, as well as for all level of creditors and office-holders, both UK-qualified and International. He took the leading case of Rubin v Eurofinance to the UK Supreme court and succeeded in preventing the enforcement of a New York insolvency related judgment.

As a co-chair of the Financial Institutions Subcommittee of the Insolvency Section of the International Bar Association (IBA), Patrick is also very active in organising conferences and promoting cross-border work. He further regularly writes on insolvency issues and recently produced a guide for insolvency professionals on the GDPR (General Data Protection Regulations) for Lexis-Nexus.