Herbert Smith Freehills has announced that its client EY, as Joint Administrators for various Nortel Networks entities in the UK and Europe, has entered into a settlement agreement in the long running global insolvency of the Nortel Group.
The settlement is conditional on various steps being taken, including court approvals in the US, Canada, UK and France. If the conditions to the settlement are satisfied it will bring to an end years of litigation in the US, Canada, UK and France and will enable substantial distributions to be made to creditors of each of these European entities.
The Joint Administrators of the Nortel European entities are: Alan Bloom, Stephen Harris, Christopher Hill and Alan Hudson. Alan Bloom and David Hughes (of EY Ireland) are appointed as administrators of Nortel Ireland.
Herbert Smith Freehills has been the lead advisers to the Joint Administrators for the European entities since 2009 and the team has been led in recent years by partners Kevin Pullen and John Whiteoak. Also acting on the case was Kevin Lloyd, a partner at Debevoise and Plimpton.
Kevin Pullen, who is partner in the restructuring and insolvency group at Herbert Smith Freehills, commented:
"Herbert Smith Freehills are incredibly proud to have been able to work for EY in this important and seminal mandate. We are very pleased to have assisted the client in bringing about this very significant settlement which, if the conditions are satisfied, will result in significant returns to the creditors of the European Nortel companies and has led to ground-breaking developments in international insolvency and pensions law."
Other advisers have included: Debevoise and Plimpton, Hughes Hubbard and Reed, Davies Ward Phillips & Vineberg and Lax O’Sullivan Lisus Gottlieb. UK counsel has included William Trower QC, Tom Smith QC, Gabriel Moss QC and Daniel Bayfield QC.
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