Video “How We Work”

Sewell & Kettle Lawyers devote our practice to insolvency and commercial litigation, restructuring advice and portfolio or complex debt recovery. Our specialised, integrated service offerings allow us to pursue aggressive and creative solutions to clients’ underlying problems, whether they are legal, financial, commercial or reputational.

Video transcription

How We Work

How do we work?

Integrated offerings are very important to our clients. When our clients come to see us and they face an insolvency scenario, they have got a bundle of different needs. Those needs include analysis, negotiation, representation in litigation and representation in dealing with other professionals. By giving our clients integrated offerings, we are able to almost become a one stop shop to help our clients turn around from the position that they are in. 

What are our strategy development essentials?

I may as well tell you the secret sauce – the processes and the methodologies that we use to help our clients analyse their problems and develop the right path to get out of an insolvency scenario. 

The first litigation analysis that can be performed is the BATNA – the best alternative to a negotiated outcome. Any client will be in a strong position if, at the start of litigation, they are able to work out the worst case scenario that they could be in if they win or lose the case. 

The next form of analysis is liquidation downside. If the company goes into liquidation, what is the worst case scenario? Are the directors going to get sued? Are they going to be unable to start up the enterprise again through a different entity? What’s the worst case? 

Also looking at what enforcement processes either the directors or the owners can initiate to recover debts or enforcement processes that can be initiated against them in the event of a liquidation.One example of that is the enforcement of a personal guarantee. 

SWOT analysis

A swot analysis is the analysis of strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. In any insolvency scenario, there are going to be things coming at the directors from different angles, so undertaking a high level SWOT analysis is very helpful in finding the right path out of that problem. 

Restructuring options

Australia doesn’t have many restructuring options. But the key options are:

• whether to look at a pre-pack; 
• whether to look at a safe harbour restructure; or,
• whether to look at a voluntary administration or small business restructuring.

Lastly, another thing to consider is claim monetisation. This means that any claims the company has on its balance sheet should be honestly assessed. In the building and construction industry, for example, what you find is that before a company goes into liquidation, it apparently has very strong receivables on its balance sheet. But when the liquidator comes in to collect them, they quickly evaporate.