UK Government Investments Special Situations Group – working with the restructuring and insolvency profession
Supporting Government’s response to nationally important businesses facing critical issues, UK Government Investments often work closely with private sector advisory practices. Jonathan Ingram, Executive Director, UKGI Special Situations Group and Cassie Williams, Director, BDO LLP explain how Government and the profession can work together in a complex political environment and the importance and benefits of UKGI’s secondment programme.

Overnight your firm has had a cyber-attack. Your operating systems are fully encrypted and the perpetrators are demanding $15m in bitcoin in the next two days or your entire client data will be released to the dark web. How do you respond?

Experts from RPC’s cyber insurance team will discuss how you can manage and help reduce the risks presented by a cyber-attack. Hear real-life examples and unique insights into response strategies including:

• Shaping your breach response and business continuity planning by discussing what to expect in the event of a cyber/data breach

• Understanding your biggest legal and regulatory risks following a cyber or data incident.

• Identifying the cyber and data risks faced by your organisation and how to mitigate these in advance of an incident.

Bethan Griffiths, Senior Associate, Cyber & Tech Insurance, RPC
Richard Breavington, Lead of Cyber & Tech Insurance team, RPC

Navigating economic turbulence 
. As UK and global economies face continued volatility what are the immediate challenges facing households and businesses? Suren Thiru, ICAEW Director, Economies explores what do our economic prospects look like as we start to head towards a general election.

Crypto distress, insolvencies and lessons learned
The infancy of crypto and associated regulation, lack of robust internal controls and governance as well as the opaque trading environment has added significant complexity to many crypto insolvencies. In the case of FTX, the issues to be resolved are governing law, the property rights in relation to digital assets not easily attributable to legal entities, the rights of customers and the commercial and practical ability to resuscitate the exchange. PwC's Ed Macnamara and Jason Gunter discuss the lessons learned from this process and how to apply them to future crypto insolvencies in a fluid regulatory environment.

Edward Macnamara, Partner, Head of Restructuring, PwC
Jason Gunter, Director, PwC

Natalie Campbell MBE, Co-CEO Belu Water
Natalie Campbell is an award-winning social entrepreneur and broadcaster. She is the Co-CEO of Belu Water (an ethical water brand), the former Director of Insight and Innovation at The Royal Foundation, and she founded a global social innovation agency A Very Good Company (AVGC). She is a proud disruptor of ‘business as usual’ and challenges clients to put purpose, sustainability, and
inclusion at the heart of their work.

Having strove to become a CEO from the age of fifteen, she founded A Very Good Company with the single mission to create a world where people 'feel good, do good and live better'. Working with brands including Virgin Media, Marks and Spencer, W Hotels, The Guardian, and Channel 4, she helped them improve their community investment, supply chain and social responsibility strategies. At The Royal Foundation she helped give new perspectives to the Patrons and lead the setup and governance of a new charitable entity for Sussex Royal.

Bethan Griffiths, Senior Associate, Cyber & Tech Insurance, RPC
Bethan advises insurance companies and their insureds on all aspects of cyber incident management including pre breach preparation, cyber breach response and post breach commercial and data litigation. Having completed a 7 month secondment at a market leading cyber/tech insurer she has a unique insight into what clients require and delivers commercially focussed advice on breach response strategy and legal/regulatory requirements. Alongside a specialism in cyber and data breach management, Bethan also has experience of advising on technology, data protection and privacy matters generally. 

Suren Thiru, Director, Economies, ICAEW
With a wide-ranging background in economics, Suren oversees ICAEW’s economic thought leadership work and is a regular commentator on the UK economy featuring regularly on television and radio and in the national press. Suren also directs ICAEW’s policy work on trade, technology and financial services. Prior to joining ICAEW, he spent nine years heading the economics team at the British Chambers of Commerce.

Jo Milner, Partner, Buchler Phillips

Jo re-joined Buchler Phillips in April 2021 after a break of 25 years, having spent her formative years with the practice in 1991-1995. Since then, she spent 8 years as a Partner in leading independent firms, as well as gaining valuable Senior level experience with Smith & Williamson and PwC. An Insolvency Appointment taker since 2004, she is a Fellow of the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England & Wales and a Licensed Insolvency Practitioner. She also has a degree in East European History from the School of Slavonic & East European Studies, University College London.

Jo specializes in both corporate and personal insolvency and has a particular interest in the administration of insolvent Credit Unions. She works closely with the Prudential Regulation Authority, and the Financial Services Compensation Scheme and has returned funds in excess of £33 million to some 13,500 Credit Union members. Jo has also dealt with the administration and subsequent liquidation of failed law firms as well as a number of retail and construction companies. Jo also enjoys dealing with contentious bankruptcy matters.

David Buchler, Chiarman, Buchler Phillips

David Buchler is a Chartered Accountant and Insolvency Practitioner, with some 40 years of experience in the field of Insolvency and Corporate Turnaround. He was a Partner at Arthur Andersen prior to becoming a Founding Partner of Buchler Phillips, one of the UK’s leading financial recovery and restructuring specialists, which was acquired in 1999 by the world’s leading risk mitigation firm, Kroll Inc.

Until 2003, David was Chairman of Kroll for Europe and Africa. He is a former President of the Association of Business Recovery and Turnaround Professionals, the R3; former Vice-Chairman of Tottenham Hotspur Football Club; former Deputy Chairman of the English National Opera; as well as Producer of the London International Opera Festival from 1984 to 1993.

David Buchler is currently Chairman of several different companies, both public and private, including Buchler Phillips; Volvere Plc; Puma VCT 13 Plc; and the English National Opera Directors Emeriti.

In addition, David Buchler is a Trustee of Syracuse University; a member of the Institute of Chartered Accountants; the Insolvency Practitioners Association; the Institute for Turnaround; as well as a Director of the Peres Centre for Peace.

Dean Beale, Inspector General and Chief Executive, The Insolvency Service

Dean has worked in insolvency for over 25 years in a variety of roles. He has been an Official Receiver, acting as a trustee in bankruptcy and liquidator, and has undertaken many insolvency-related investigations.

In addition to his public sector experience, Dean has also spent time in the private sector as a forensic accountant investigating fraud and managing commercial disputes.

Prior to becoming Chief Executive for the Insolvency Service in 2019, Dean was its Director of Strategy and Change, overseeing policy development, regulation of the insolvency sector and leading the agency’s transformation programme. As CEO, Dean has been involved in some the country’s biggest insolvency cases including British Steel, Thomas Cook and Carillion.

David Ampaw, Partner, DLA Piper UK LLP
David is a partner and key member of the London and International Restructuring practice of DLA Piper. He has 20+ years’ experience in non-contentious restructuring, insolvency and special situations assignments acting for corporates, clearing banks, international and investment banks, debt and hedge funds.

He has advised in relation to a number of domestic and cross-border workouts and assignments taking in, in the last 12 months alone, schemes and restructuring plans in Spain, Italy, the Netherlands and, the topic of today, the UK by way of the Part 26A Restructuring Plan.

Chris Parker, Partner, DLA Piper UK LLP
Chris Parker is a Partner at DLA Piper, and co-chair of the Global Restructuring Practice. His desk focuses particularly on formal insolvency processes in a global context, often in relation to the financial services sector.

Chris leads the contentious restructuring group in London, working on international fraud and asset recovery, investigations, and litigation in relation to various financial structures. Chris has represented officeholders and institutions on high-profile, complex proceedings.

Philip Povey, Senior Assocaite, DLA Piper UK LLP
Philip Povey is a senior associate in the Special Situations and Financial Restructuring practice at DLA Piper and based in the firm’s London office. His practice focuses on complex cross-border corporate and financial restructurings, special situations and formal insolvency procedures. Philip has considerable experience advising in connection with cram-down processes (including schemes of arrangement, restructuring plans and CVAs), restructurings of public bond debt, work-out negotiations, liability management transactions and formal insolvency / enforcement.

Cassie Williams, Director, BDO UK LLP
As a qualified accountant (FCCA) and restructuring professional (JIEB) Cassie has a broad range of experience across multiple sectors, including natural resources, energy and public sector, with experience of working at pace with government in relation to complex critical national infrastructure and distressed financial support measures, as part of the special situations team at UK Government Investments.

Jonathan Ingram, Executive Director, UK Government Investments
Jonathan joined UKGI in early 2018 and is part of the Special Situations team which focuses on sectors and corporates where there is a risk of economic shock impact to major employment or assets of national interest and where there is a strategic case for Government intervention.
Jonathan has over 20 years’ experience of providing restructuring and insolvency advice to key Government stakeholders in complex distressed situations. A lawyer by background, Jonathan has worked in both national and international law firms. In addition to working in the Special Situations team Jonathan has undertaken a number of Governance reviews of major Government Arms Length Bodies, led a review of UKGI’s approach to its Shareholder role and led UKGI’s Risk Function.

Richard Breavington, Lead of Cyber & Tech Insurance team
Richard is a Partner at RPC and leads the Cyber & Tech Insurance team. He has been dealing with cyber breach incidents since RPC's work in this area began. The team have worked on many hundreds of breaches since then. He has advised on a full range of breach situations at senior levels of a range of insured and other corporate clients.
Richard is regularly quoted in the mainstream press on cyber matters and has presented at numerous industry events.
Richard also advises on tech-related disputes, both arising out of cyber breach incidents and more generally, as well as advising on insurance-related matters including coverage.

Edward Macnamara, Partner, Head of Restructuring, PwC
Ed is a restructuring partner with over 25 years’ experience and with significant expertise in financial services. He is one of the Lehman administrators, is heavily involved in the insolvency of FTX, led aspects of restructuring work for Co-op Bank at the time of its capital shortfall, is dealing with the run-off and residual issues of UKAR (Bradford & Bingley and Northern Rock) and has worked across central and eastern Europe, Africa and the Caribbean region on various restructurings in financial services.

Jason Gunter, Director, PwC
Jason has 15 years experience in advising creditors, companies and regulators in navigating restructuring and insolvency situations. He has significant experience in financial services, banking and asset wealth management restructuring, resolution, wind down, non core carve out and insolvency. Jason is currently working on the provisional liquidation of FTX in the Bahamas. Jason’s wider restructuring advisory experience includes McColls, AS Adventure, Interserve, Thomas Cook plc, Ambatovy, Stemcor, OW Bunker and Lehman.

Natalie Peacock, Associate, DLA Piper UK LLP
Natalie Peacock is a restructuring and insolvency lawyer in DLA Piper’s Restructuring and Insolvency team and is a specialist in distressed aviation matters. She has experience of a wide range of contentious and non-contentious matters, including formal insolvency matters, financial restructuring, asset-based lending and domestic and cross jurisdictional turnaround matters. Natalie’s practice spans a number of sectors, including aviation, retail, industrial, construction and consumer credit.

Becky Dacre, Partner, Mazars | Chair of ICAEW’s Restructuring & Insolvency Advisory Group

Becky is a licensed insolvency practitioner and chartered accountant with over 20 years of experience of advising businesses in the Midlands and London. She helps owner-managed businesses and medium-sized companies across a wide range of sectors, with a particular specialism in healthcare providers, retail, automotive/aerospace, engineering and construction-related trades. Becky regularly advises on solvent restructuring and group rationalisation.

Tom Ahmad, Director, BABR | Vice-Chair of the ICAEW’s Restructuring and Insolvency Advisory Group

Tom is a chartered accountant, licensed insolvency practitioner and in 2007 co-founded Bailey Ahmad Business Recovery - who provide solutions for businesses and individuals in financial difficulty, as well as coordinating the structured closure and distribution of assets of successful companies that have come to the end of their life. Tom is also the current ICAEW Croydon District Society President

Manolete is the UK’s leading insolvency litigation financing company, helping IPs to realise claims with a track record over 10 years backed by insolvency specialists around the country. We cover all insolvency claims.

Marsh Restructuring & Recovery Practice has been helping Insolvency Professionals for over 30 years with insurance placements, bonds, claims resolutions, H&S guidance, and more.