Indian restructuring experts win prestigious global award
Restructuring experts from India have been awarded one of the most prestigious global prizes in their field for their pioneering work on the operational turnaround of Essar Steel.
Every year, the Turnaround Management Association (TMA) – the largest non-profit body for restructuring professionals worldwide – hands out the Turnaround of the Year Awards. This awards ceremony recognises the most successful and impactful turnarounds of the past year across all corners of the globe, and is based on many rounds of diligence by an independent awards committee.
At a ceremony held earlier this month, winners were announced across six turnarounds categories, with the most prominent category ‘Mega Company Turnaround’ going to the team of advisors that worked on the historic Essar Steel case.
When Essar Steel went bankrupt in 2017 following the State Bank of India’s filing for insolvency proceedings, it sent a shock through India’s steel and broader manufacturing industry. As part of the company’s restructuring and wind down, more than $7 billion of debt and non-performing assets had to be managed.
A cohort of external professional services firms were called in to deal with the matter, including law firms Cyril Amarchand Mangaldas and Shardul Amarchand Mangaldas, and Alvarez & Marsal, one of the globe’s leading restructuring consultancies. Over a two year period, they worked to resolve India’s most complex and wide-ranging restructuring in modern history – at times of peak workload more than 50 experts were working on the case simultaneously.
Down the line, the restructuring experts managed to recover over 85% for financial creditors, far above the expectations set by analysts when the insolvency process kicked off.
Further reading: How A&M advised on Essar Steel's historic turnaround and sale.
The case has caught the eye of industry practitioners globally, and shaped much of the practical application of India’s Insolvency & Bankruptcy Code (IBC) introduced in 2016.
At the TMA Awards, nine experts involved in the Essar Steel case were lauded for their instrumental role:
Alvarez & Marsal: Nikhil Shah and Vivek Kamra
Essar Steel: Dilip Oommen
State Bank of India: Kshitij Mohan
Edelweiss Asset Reconstruction Company: Srinath Narasimhan
Cyril Amarchand Mangaldas: Dhananjay Kumar
Shardul Amarchand Mangaldas: Sapan Gupta and Soummo Biswas
Independent Consultant: Satish Kumar Gupta
Other winners of TMA’s restructuring awards went to landmark insolvency cases in the US (2x), the Czech Republic and Portugal.
