Complex Insolvency

Creditors and shareholders are often faced with a situation where an insolvent company fails with seemingly no assets. 

In reality the assets may have been dissipated by individuals either by transferring them at undervalue (or no value at all!) to other connected companies and individuals or simply by removing them from the ownership of the company. In either case the assets appear to be beyond the reach of the creditors and shareholders who may face a total loss situation. 

Very often the directors will be hoping that since there appear to be no assets within the company interested parties will effectively give up and suffer a total loss. Many insolvency practitioners are reluctant to take on these types of cases because there are insufficient assets with which to pay creditors.

However with the right approach and a detailed understanding of the insolvency legislation and powers that are available to the liquidator it is possible to achieve quite significant recoveries for the benefit of creditors. Key to achieving these recoveries is a strong team made up of an insolvency practitioner, insolvency lawyers and, often, counsel. 

Gore and Company provides a Complex Insolvency service which is aimed at this type of situation. We work alongside our team of leading law firms and counsel on a contingent fee basis and we pursue assets and recoveries for the benefit of creditors using a variety of powers that are conferred on a liquidator by the Insolvency Act 1986.

Recoveries may result either from out of court settlements or indeed recovery of assets and their subsequent sale. It is even possible to recover sums from very old debtor balances.

Often the key skill involved in establishing recoveries is the ability to carry out a detailed investigation of the financial position of a company based on incomplete and inaccurate accounting records so called forensic accounting. Gore and Company has extensive experience and expertise in this area and can reconstruct data and information based on few accurate records and using a variety of third party sources of information such as bank records, supplier and customer records and interviews with former employees and other stakeholders. 

Previous cases include cross border asset recoveries supported by foreign lawyers, asset recoveries from complex litigation, recovery from directors by way of settlement of preference claims and asset investigations leading to settlement with third parties.