(October 27, 2009, Weil Gotshal News)
Weil, Gotshal & Manges received the US Law Firm in Europe Award at the FT's third annual Innovative Lawyer Awards for the firm’s representation of Kaupthing Bank in Iceland.
Weil Gotshal’s London team, led by Matthew Shankland and Dominic McCahill, has been advising Kaupthing on its reorganization and in litigation to recover assets, as well as its action against the British Government. Lawyers from Weil Gotshal's New York office have been coordinating Kaupthing’s Chapter 15 bankruptcy filing and further asset assessment and recovery work.
The FT report also highlights the firm's role in the precedent-setting double pre-pack merger of Vertis and American Color Graphics, led by Gary Holtzer. The deal, in which two struggling commercial printing companies used Chapter 11 bankruptcy to restructure their debt and combine their businesses, took more than six months of complicated negotiations with five levels of bondholders in aggregate. The timing of the closing was during the depths of the credit crisis, making it even more difficult to secure the final financing.
Weil Gotshal was highly commended in the US firms section for accelerating cumbersome court procedures in the Lehman bankruptcy, maximizing the value of Lehman’s US investment banking business and setting a new standard for 363s.