Speed with discipline
Screening in days, options in days more. Fast is not careless here; fast is the discipline, because delay is the most expensive advisor in the room.
Special Situations
Advisory for owners, creditors, and buyers when the ordinary playbook
stops working.
Recovery, restructuring, distressed transactions, and shareholder
disputes, run by one firm with speed and discretion, across
jurisdictions. By introduction. In confidence.
Every situation on this page has a clock on it. The work is the same discipline as the rest of the firm, run faster, with fewer illusions.
We stabilise the position, price every option side by side,
choose the strategy on facts, and execute it: the refinancing,
the restructure, the sale, the recovery.
The mandate suits companies under pressure, creditors holding
positions, buyers of other people's difficulties, and shareholders
in a standoff.
The situation takes several forms.
The company under pressure
Covenants tightening, creditors circling, options narrowing. Refinance, restructure, or sell, decided on facts before the facts decide for you.
The creditor position
A loan, a receivable, or a judgment worth pursuing properly: recover, enforce, restructure, or exit, priced against each other.
The distressed acquisition
Buying well in someone else's bad year. Speed and certainty are the currency, and preparation is where both come from.
The recovery and tracing matter
Misappropriated, hidden, or disputed assets followed across borders and brought back, with counsel and investigators coordinated by one firm.
The shareholder standoff
Deadlock, dispute, or a partner who has to leave. The negotiated exit is almost always cheaper than the alternative, and we get to it faster.
The process.
Six phases, compressed to the clock.
Screening happens in days here, not weeks, and the situations that end well are the ones that started early.
I
Screening
The conversation today, under NDA from the first minute. The position, the parties, the clock, and whether we are the right firm. If we are not, we say so fast, because your time is the asset being spent.
II
Stabilise
The position held before it is improved: cash controlled, creditors sequenced, information gathered, nothing signed in panic.
III
The options
Refinance, restructure, sell, recover, or hold, priced side by side with real numbers. The table below, run with yours, in days.
IV
The strategy
One path chosen on facts, with the fallback designed before it is needed. Hope is not a strategy; a second option is.
V
Execute
The chosen path run at transaction pace: the lender process, the sale, the enforcement, the negotiation. Counsel instructed and coordinated; pressure applied where it moves things.
VI
Resolve & recover
The situation closed, the proceeds or the company secured, and the structure left stronger than the one that got here. Then, if wanted, the quiet rebuild.
Situations reward the early call. The company that engages at the first tightening covenant has ten options; the same company two quarters later has three, and the good ones went first.
Both sides of the table.
The firm has sat in every
seat at this table. That is why
it reads the other side quickly.
For the company
refinance · restructure · sell
stabilise · negotiate · rebuild
For creditors & buyers
recover · enforce · acquire
trace · restructure · exit
Ladd & Co.
one discipline, either side, never both at once
The firm works both sides of these situations,
never both sides of the same one.
The dashed line is the conflict wall, and it is absolute. Having stood on each side of it, in different matters, is precisely what makes the firm fast on yours.
Why Parties Engage Us
Every seat, sat in
Company-side and creditor-side, in different matters. We price the other side's next move because we have made it.
The options, priced
Refinance, restructure, sell, recover, hold: real numbers side by side before the strategy is chosen. Conviction follows arithmetic.
Cross-border enforcement, natively
Assets and counterparties do not respect borders, and neither does the recovery. Counsel and investigators coordinated across jurisdictions by one firm.
Discretion, operational
In a situation, information is a weapon and silence is a position. Who knows what, and when, is managed as carefully as the money.
Senior on the mandate
The people you meet are the people in the room when it matters. Nothing is handed down.
The options, priced side by side.
The option
What it preserves
What it costs
When it wins
Refinance
What it preserves
Ownership and control, intact
What it costs
New terms, priced for the risk
When it wins
The business is sound; the balance sheet
is not
Restructure
What it preserves
The enterprise, and most of its value
What it costs
Concessions, from everyone
When it wins
The debts and the operations both need surgery
Sell
What it preserves
Value, banked before it erodes
What it costs
The company itself
When it wins
Time or appetite has run out, honestly assessed
Recover
What it preserves
The claim, pursued to money
What it costs
Time, cost, and attention
When it wins
You are the creditor, and the assets are findable
Qualitative by design. The options phase runs the same table with your numbers, in days, and the strategy falls out of it rather than out of anyone's preferences, including ours.
The firm acts in: recovery & asset tracing / restructures / distressed sales & purchases / shareholder disputes / cross-border enforcement
What we act on.
The firm acts where the position justifies the effort:
Companies with an enterprise worth saving, creditors with claims
worth pursuing, buyers with capital ready to move, and
shareholders whose standoff has a negotiated exit.
Typically cross-border, always against a clock.
The firm works both sides of these situations, never both sides of the same one; conflicts are checked before the first substantive conversation. Terms are set out plainly in the Engagement Agreement before any work begins.
Asked before most mandates.
How fast can you move?
The first conversation today, screening in days, options priced in days more. In this mandate, our speed is part of the product, and the Engagement Agreement is written to match it.
Is it too late?
Usually not, but every quarter of delay retires options. If it genuinely is too late for the good outcomes, we will say so in screening and price the remaining ones honestly.
Do you act for companies or creditors?
Both, in different matters, never opposed in the same one. The conflict check comes before the first substantive conversation, and the wall is absolute.
What about litigation?
We coordinate it rather than conduct it: counsel instructed, strategy held, pressure sequenced. Litigation is one instrument on the table, and often the threat is worth more than the filing.
Will anyone find out?
Not from us, and managing exactly who knows what, and when, is part of the strategy itself. In these situations discretion is not a courtesy; it is advantage held.
What does it cost?
Scoped fast and set out plainly in the Engagement Agreement before any work begins, structured to the situation. There are no surprises in our paperwork, and in this mandate especially, that is the point of us.
No public references.
The firm does not name clients, counterparties, or terms.
Not in marketing, not in conversation, not after the fact. The
parties best placed to vouch for the work are the reason
we will not ask them to. If discretion matters on your best day,
it is worth everything on your worst.
Adjacent to this mandate.
Started early, most of
these end quietly.
The conversation can happen today, under NDA from the first
minute. Outline the situation, the parties, and the clock. If we are
the right firm for it, we will say what the first week looks like. If we
are not, we will say so fast. Request an Introduction, in confidence.
No obligation. An NDA is available before any detail is shared.