Helen Martin

Managing Associate
Helen helps clients to navigate periods of change and financial distress, working with them to rescue or strengthen businesses and guiding them through insolvency processes and transactions.
Helen helps clients to navigate periods of change and financial distress, working with them to rescue or strengthen businesses and guiding them through insolvency processes and transactions.

About

Helen is an agile lawyer who combines intellectual rigour with a pragmatic and responsive approach.

Helen joined Stevens & Bolton in 2020, having previously worked at a magic circle and a US firm.

Helen has substantial restructuring and insolvency experience, including advising secured creditors and insolvency practitioners in relation to formal insolvency processes, acting for buyers and sellers in relation to distressed, time-critical business sales, and providing strategic advice to directors in periods of financial challenge. Helen also regularly works with businesses in relation to their external debt funding requirements, whether this involves raising new funding or refinancing existing arrangements. She acts both lender and borrower side on leveraged finance and real estate finance transactions.

With over a decade of experience in the insurance industry, specialising in insurance restructuring and insolvency, Helen is a key member of the cross-departmental insurance sector group. She is a trusted advisor in the insurance and reinsurance legacy space, with a strong background in implementing successful solutions for run-off portfolios and insolvent insurers, including schemes of arrangement and Part VII transfers.

Helen is Vice Chair of the Insolvent Financial Institutions Subcommittee of the International Bar Association (IBA) and is active in the Turnaround Management Association (TMA), both as co-chair of the South-East Counties Regional Board and as a member of the TMA Europe Network of Women Committee. She is also a member of the Law Society’s Women’s Network Committee.

Expertise
Finance Franchising Hospitality and leisure Insurance Technology

Experience

  • Recent work
    • Acting for insolvency practitioners and purchasers in relation to distressed business sales and purchases, with stand-out recent matters including the purchase of a major West End casino out of administration;
    • Acting for the administrators of CX Reinsurance Company Limited (in administration) in relation to its recently sanctioned scheme of arrangement;
    • Advising the provisional liquidators of a Bermudan life insurer in relation to recognition of the Bermudan proceedings in England, and protection of its UK assets;
    • Advising a multi-national energy conglomerate on the refinancing of its retail fuel business;
    • Acting for UK challenger and high street banks on leveraged finance transactions, with particular experience in the hospitality sector.
  • Qualifications and recognition

    Helen regularly writes for both legal and industry publications, including Insolvency and Restructuring International, PLC magazine, Lexis PSL, World Financial Review and Accountancy Daily. She also contributed the chapter on insurance insolvency for the IRLA (Insurance and Reinsurance Legacy Association) Handbook.

  • Acting for insolvency practitioners and purchasers in relation to distressed business sales and purchases, with stand-out recent matters including the purchase of a major West End casino out of administration;
  • Acting for the administrators of CX Reinsurance Company Limited (in administration) in relation to its recently sanctioned scheme of arrangement;
  • Advising the provisional liquidators of a Bermudan life insurer in relation to recognition of the Bermudan proceedings in England, and protection of its UK assets;
  • Advising a multi-national energy conglomerate on the refinancing of its retail fuel business;
  • Acting for UK challenger and high street banks on leveraged finance transactions, with particular experience in the hospitality sector.

Helen regularly writes for both legal and industry publications, including Insolvency and Restructuring International, PLC magazine, Lexis PSL, World Financial Review and Accountancy Daily. She also contributed the chapter on insurance insolvency for the IRLA (Insurance and Reinsurance Legacy Association) Handbook.

Clients comment on Helen’s “quality delivery” and “excellent work … in an intense, time critical transaction” adding that she has “excellent knowledge of the environment and a very practical approach to advancing the transaction and resolving problems along the way.”

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