Deacons Australia has recruited Troy Doyle from Clifford Chance to head up a team focusing on advising clients on distressed investments in Australia. Doyle was previously the restructuring practice leader for south-east Asia at CC but decided to join Deacons, in light of their upcoming merger with Norton Rose Group. He will work out of Deacons’ Sydney office as special counsel within the firm’s insolvency & restructuring group.

“Obviously I was aware of the merger with Norton Rose and a lot of my key clients are key clients of Norton Rose as well,” Doyle told ALB. “Norton Rose has a strong relationship with financial institutions, which fits nicely into my skill base and the distressed investments and restructuring experience that I have.”

Doyle said that his clients are holding impaired assets and he expects the workload to be significant over the next couple of years. “Having spoken to a lot of the financial institutions, they’ve told me that they’re holding large amounts of impaired assets and are trying to work out how to manage those assets,” he said. “Financial institutions are under pressure to maximise liquidity and reduce their capital obligations, so they might offload non-performing loan portfolios or trade debts in Australia.”

Doyle said other institutions are looking at taking equity positions in distressed assets, by way of debt-to-equity swaps. He will work with the corporate and banking teams to help restructure distressed assets for clients based in Australia and throughout Asia.

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