Imran Aslam advises in relation to all aspects of domestic and cross-border restructuring and insolvency matters. His clients include distressed investors, borrowers, directors, financial institutions, bondholders, and insolvency practitioners. Imran provides advice on a sector-agnostic basis, but has a specific focus and experience in the automotive, manufacturing, real estate, financial services, retail, telecommunications, leisure, oil and gas and sport sectors.
Imran has been recognised in both Chambers U.K. and The Legal 500 U.K. His clients describe him as thinking “outside the box and shows a real determination to achieve positive results”, as well as describing him as “a good team player, easy to work with and committed to getting the right result for the client”. In addition, other client have indicated Imran as being “excellent. He knows the law inside out but is also very commercial in his approach”, and “is great to work with; knowledgeable, client focused and bright”.
Representative transactional matters:
- Alteri Investors on its acquisition of Benson for Beds, Harveys Furniture, and their associated group of manufacturing companies from Steinhoff International and subsequent pre-packaged sale of Benson for Beds.
- Jack Wills, the apparel and luxury goods retailer, and the administrators from KPMG on the restructuring and pre-packaged sale of the business to Sports Direct.
- A group of US-based landlords in relation to the restructuring efforts of the Arcadia group.
- Centerbridge, LP in its role as an anchor investor in a consortium that provided a US $1.08 billion capital investment in connection with the comprehensive restructuring of Seadrill Limited. This deal was awarded the “Restructuring Deal of the Year” at the Deal Awards 2019.
- The board of the Gaucho restaurant group on its restructuring activities.
- The board of the Powerleague group on its restructuring activities.
- Northwood Investors in several matters, including the purchase of various loans from Irish Bank Resolution Corporation and related acquisitions and refinancings of Diagonal Mar Shopping Centre in Barcelona, the Four Seasons Hotel in Prague and the offices at Heuston South Quarter in Dublin.
- Acted as lead counsel to an Oil & Gas debtor based and operated in Mauritius, Kenya, UK and Cayman and whose debt exceeding US$100m required to be restructured. Restructuring included a Mauritius administration, placing certain of the debtor companies into Cayman joint provisional liquidations, and recognition of the foreign insolvencies in England and Wales.
- Adviser to a Chinese educational institution based in the UK in respect of carrying out an out-of-court restructuring.
- Counsel to an oil & gas PLC (in administration), headquartered in the UK and has operations globally.
- Adviser to a number of companies, both from a sales, as well as a buy side, perspective with regard to pre-packaged administration sales and acquisitions, including acting for London Marathon in its acquisition of Brighton Marathon, as well being involved in pre-packs in the chocolate manufacturing and financial services industries.
Representative contentious matters:
- Represented Sberbank in a successful challenge against an application made to the High Court and the Court of Appeal by the International Bank of Azerbaijan (IBA), pursuant to which the IBA sought an order for a permanent moratorium against creditor action in England and Wales, following the voluntary restructuring of the IBA in Azerbaijan (OJSC International Bank of Azerbaijan, Re [2018] EWCA CiV 2802).
- Involved in Titan Europe 2007-1 (NHP) v U.S. Bank and others, which gave guidance on the interpretation of the special servicer termination provisions set out in the servicing agreement for the Titan commercial mortgage-backed securitisation.
Imran has joined as a partner in the firm’s R&I team in London, having joined us from Armstrong Teasdale. Imran trained and qualified at Sidley Austin before spending nearly five years at Fried Frank’s R&I department.
Imran graduated with a LLB from King’s College London, and an LLM from Cambridge University.