Law firm Stephenson Harwood LLP has strengthened its restructuring and insolvency (R&I) practice with the arrival of partner Tim Crocker, who will be based in its London office.

Crocker is a non-contentious finance lawyer, with more than 20 years of experience advising on complex debt restructurings and insolvencies. His expertise covers out of court restructurings, the use of composition proceedings, distressed refinancings and emergency new money advances, insolvency proceedings and debt trading. With an established track-record in leading multi-disciplinary legal teams, Crocker has notable experience devising complex implementation structures, managing stakeholders, and addressing and resolving intercreditor issues.

“The addition of Tim to our established R&I team is a real coup for the firm," said Julian Cahn, head of R&I, Stephenson Harwood. “Not only does his skill set provide additional bandwidth to our existing R&I capabilities, it also complements wider expertise within the firm, including in the private equity, shipping and aviation teams. Following the recruitment of Ian Benjamin, Tim joining the firm marks another significant development of our capabilities in this area."

"As we begin to emerge from the pandemic, we expect to see a significant increase in the volume and complexity of restructuring advice sought," said Tammy Samuel, head of finance, Stephenson Harwood. "Governments across the globe have made unprecedented investments to support business over the last 18 months, but that support is now largely reaching its end. For many businesses, the coming months and years will be crunch time, when they need to critically assess the changes they might need to make in order to ensure their long-term success. That's where the experience and understanding of specialists like Tim will really come into its own, and why R&I – on both the contentious and non-contentious sides – is something we're actively looking to grow at the firm."

Stephenson Harwood's global R&I practice is a multi-jurisdictional team of lawyers, who have experience of advising all relevant stakeholders on all issues arising in connection with financial distress. restructuring, and insolvency. The team's work covers all sectors, and encompasses domestic and international debt restructurings, refinancings, workouts and turnaround strategies, debt for equity swaps, distressed M&A, distressed investing and loan to own strategies, schemes of arrangement, Restructuring Plans, company voluntary arrangements, administrations (including pre-packs), receiverships, liquidations, personal bankruptcy, insolvency litigation, investigations, fraud and asset recovery, and commercial litigation.