Restructuring across borders: Toolkit for England and Wales

England and Wales remains one of the world's most sophisticated and frequently used restructuring jurisdictions. Its toolkit, anchored by the scheme of arrangement and the more recently introduced restructuring plan, gives debtors and creditors significant flexibility. But that flexibility comes with complexity, and the courts are increasingly called upon to resolve disputes over valuation evidence, class treatment, and whether a company's approach to different creditor groups is genuinely fair. 

Christopher Poel, senior knowledge lawyer at A&O Shearman, is joined by Philip Wells and Akshita Pandit from A&O Shearman's London Restructuring team. The discussion opens the Restructuring Across Borders series by mapping the English restructuring landscape and examining what distinguishes the scheme of arrangement from the restructuring plan in terms of their structure, requirements, and strategic utility. What are the key procedural and substantive differences between the two tools? Where are the courts currently drawing lines on disputed valuation evidence? And how are recent decisions shaping the way companies approach the treatment of different classes of creditors? 

Restructuring practitioners, distressed investors, and in-house counsel working on or monitoring English restructuring proceedings will leave this episode with a current view of the English toolkit and the areas of developing judicial focus that most affect how these processes are run. 

Restructuring Across Borders maps the restructuring and insolvency landscape across more than 50 jurisdictions worldwide, drawing on the expertise of A&O Shearman's global restructuring group and its partner law firms. Each episode examines the pre-insolvency tools, court-supervised procedures, and emerging developments in a specific jurisdiction, with a focus on the practical implications for debtors, creditors, and cross-border advisers. The series accompanies A&O Shearman's Restructuring Across Borders Toolkit, a free reference resource available at aoshearman.com.