Mr William Swan > Baker McKenzie > London, England > Lawyer Profile

William’s practice is centred around financial restructuring and advising on distressed investments, on trading in distressed debt, and on special situations. William has spent the majority of his career assisting buy-side institutions in their capacity as creditors and investors (often acting through ad hoc groups) on complex, cross-border situations, frequently subject to the insolvency and restructuring legal frameworks of the relevant jurisdictions.

During the course of his career, William has acted as in-house counsel for two investment managers, in each case as a member of those firms’ distressed investment teams. William has a commercial and operational familiarity with buy-side investors’ investment and trading strategies and processes. In these roles, William advised on financial restructurings and distressed, special situations and event-driven opportunities (including litigation funding and direct lending transactions) and structured, negotiated and drafted documentation for a range of complex transactions and trades spanning multiple asset classes and jurisdictions. Additionally, William has worked as a member of the senior analyst team on the par and distressed trading desk of a US-headquartered global bank.

William spent the first eight years of his career as a qualified solicitor in the London office of a large American law firm, working within the restructuring practice. During that period, he spent 18 months in the Tokyo office of that firm, primarily assisting US and European buy-side clients with their investments and finance matters in Japan, including restructuring and bankruptcy-related transactions.