Paul Davies, James Cowper Kreston

Paul Davies is a Business Restructuring and Insolvency Partner at James Cowper Kreston, who has a particularly focus on turnaround and restructuring and is President of the Turnaround Management Association UK from 1 January 2021.

Paul has operated in restructuring and insolvency for over 20 years and his role incorporates debt advisory (particularly the alternative finance market), accelerated M&A, Board advisory, business reviews and stakeholder negotiations. Paul has recently worked in a number of sectors including food, hotels and leisure, construction and logistics. He was named Turnaround Professional of the Year at the 2017 TRI Awards.

Paul is also a qualified insolvency practitioner and is licensed by the ICAEW to accept formal insolvency appointments in the UK.

Steven Chait, Wells Fargo Capital Finance

Steven leads Wells Fargo Capital Finance's team in the UK, which provides comprehensive asset-based lending and technology finance to public, private and private equity backed companies across a variety of sectors. I joined Burdale Financial Limited (now Wells Fargo Capital Finance) in 1992 and have been instrumental to Wells Fargo Capital Finance's growth in the UK.

Joanne Rumley, Foot Anstey LLP

Joanne leads Foot Anstey's Restructuring and Insolvency offering collaborating with a broad range of businesses, directors, lenders, other stakeholders and professional advisors. Her role is focused on opportunities for turnaround rescue and restructure but also involves managing formal insolvency processes. She works closely with distressed equity and debt investors acquiring debt or equity and managing their exposure via exit, as well as with turnaround professionals and insolvency practitioners.

Joanne is regularly found in the board room providing strategic advice to directors of businesses close to insolvency, particularly around their duties and responsibilities when dealing with distress. She also has significant experience advising stakeholders on managing their risk and exposure to businesses in financial difficulty and provides advice to financial institutions in respect of their stressed and distressed portfolios, covering new lending, security structures and enforcement. Joanne and her team are specialists in the investment bank special administration regime overseeing the return of significant values of client monies and custody assets across a portfolio of these cases.

Joanne enjoys contributing to the wider business communities in which she works and is a national director of TMA UK and Vice President of the Insolvency Lawyers’ Association and more locally a board member of the West of England Local Enterprise Partnership.
 

Nick Taylor, Gordon Brothers

Nick is responsible for developing and delivering retail strategies that add significant economic and operational value to Clients across the World.

He’s a recognised industry expert in retail asset recovery, valuations and operations – one of only a few people globally that has depth of expert knowledge, skills and experience in this field. Which is why three of world's Top-25 Retailers choose to engage and benefit from his services.
Specialising in DIY Home Improvement, Department stores and Apparel store sectors, his experience spans across 40 countries worldwide. Nick has led various country-based retail teams to successfully deliver projects for leading retailers, each project requiring a unique retail-solution; most notably, the recent acquisition of the Laura Ashley brand, archives and related IP and the current partnership with NEXT plc.

Nick is a thoroughbred retailer who enjoyed over 25 successful years of senior, front-end Retail, Operational and Marketing roles within the Kingfisher Group prior to joining Gordon Brothers International.
 

Shaun Roy, Knight Frank

Shaun is an Equity Partner at Knight Frank and leads the Hotels Team. He has worked in the capital markets arena for over 17 years. In that time he has been involved in the transaction of in excess of £7.5bn of commercial real estate.

Key areas of specialist within the Hotel space are Sale & Leaseback, Ground rents, fixed lease hotels and development funding.