Leading Irish law firm William Fry LLP is delighted to have been shortlisted in three categories by the Financial Times Innovative Lawyer Awards 2024: Innovative lawyers in private capital; Innovative lawyers in restructuring; and In-house legal team: Innovation in outside counsel management in a joint submission with Mercer Global Investments.
The awards highlight the best law firms and in-house legal teams driving innovation in the legal sector in Europe.
The three categories the firm has been shortlisted for cover both legal expertise and the business of law. In the Innovative lawyers in private capital category, William Fry advised Elavon on an innovative cross-border conversion of its Dutch-registered European holding company, Elavon European Holdings B.V., to an Irish-registered private company limited by shares. The Conversion was the first cross-border conversion of an entity incorporated in another EEA member state into Ireland approved by the High Court.
In the Innovative lawyers in restructuring category, the William Fry team advised a group of bondholders who were owed US$475m from two Irish companies within the Russian state owned GTLK Group. Following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the GTLK Group was subject to EU, UK and US asset freezing sanctions with the consequence that the Irish GTLK Europe companies defaulted on their bond obligations (par value of $3.75m) to, amongst others, international and institutional bondholders. William Fry took an innovative legal approach to assist the bondholders to directly enforce the bonds and secure an Irish High Court order to appoint liquidators who were subsequently, amongst other actions, able to obtain a ground breaking declaration from the courts that upon liquidation the Irish companies were no longer subject to EU sanctions. This was the largest court ordered liquidation in the history of the Irish State and the first time that bond holders had taken direct action to have a company liquidated due to the application of international sanctions.
In the In-house legal team category, William Fry collaborated with a key client, Mercer Global Investments, on a substantial project to develop a suite of ‘best in class’ fund documents for its European fund solutions business. William Fry partnered with Mercer’s inhouse legal and product teams, not just on the ambitious redesign of fund offering documents, but also on optimising and integrating legal and product workflows and embracing legal tech solutions for the ongoing management of fund offering documentation.
Commenting on the shortlisting, Owen O’Sullivan, Managing Partner at William Fry said, “William Fry has had an exceptional year advising on some of the most noteworthy transactions and cases in Europe, increasing market share, growing in terms of headcount and rolling-out a number of innovative tools and systems for our clients and staff. These nominations reinforce our place as the corporate law firm of choice in the Irish market and I am delighted that our Corporate / M&A, Restructuring & Insolvency and Investment Funds teams are being recognised. At William Fry, we work constantly to innovate and are solutions focused in our approach and we are delighted this is being acknowledged.”