The American Lawyer Recognizes IVG Restructuring as Global Finance Deal of the Year: Restructuring (Germany)

The American Lawyer recognized the restructuring of IVG Immobilien AG as the Global Finance Deal of the Year: Restructuring (Germany) as part of its 2015 Global Legal Awards, which honored the biggest and most important global commercial legal matters of the year. Kirkland & Ellis International LLP advised IVG’s largest lender group, an ad hoc committee of a €1.35 billion syndicated loan. The committee led the restructuring and insolvency plan negotiations after many of IVG’s original lender banks were bought out by distressed debt funds.

Kirkland also assisted the wider lender group, comprising more than 60 different banks and funds, in developing and setting up the new holding structure for the implementation of the insolvency plan. IVG completed its in-court restructuring of €4.3 billion of debt in September 2014 within a record 13 months after filing for insolvency.

Kirkland was recognized at The American Lawyer Global Legal Awards dinner in New York on September 28, 2015, for its role in this restructuring, which was one of the largest in-court restructurings by debt ever done in Germany, and a landmark deal for the use of a debt-to-equity swap under the application of the new German insolvency regime “ESUG,” which was introduced in 2012. 

Restructuring partners Leo Plank and Sacha Lürken, corporate partner Björn Holland, tax partner Oded Schein and debt finance partner Wolfgang Nardi led the team, which included restructuring associates Wolfram Prusko, Carl Pickerill and Ksenia Shubina, corporate partner Marcus Klie and associate Thomas Komanek and tax associate Michael Schöpfel. Restructuring partner Kon Asimacopoulos, tax partner Russell Light and corporate partner Carol Anne Huff covered the English and U.S. aspects of the transaction.

Kirkland & Ellis is a 1,600-attorney law firm representing global clients in complex restructuring, corporate and tax, litigation, dispute resolution and arbitration, and intellectual property matters. The Firm has offices in Munich, Beijing, Chicago, Hong Kong, Houston, London, Los Angeles, New York, Palo Alto, San Francisco, Shanghai and Washington, D.C.