Turnaround Management Association (T.M.A.) awarded Bestsport as aTurnaround of the Year
10.07.2014Company: PricewaterhouseCoopers Česká republika, s.r.o.
With a record number of entries for this years awards and the standard very high, the judging panel had a difficult job and the final decisions were extremely close. The judges would like to thank all those who entered for their efforts in making it such a good contest. The 2014 winner in Small company category is Bestsport.
Turnaround of the Year, Small Company (revenues less than €100 million) is BESTSPORT, Czech Republic.
The award-winning team that participated in the reorganization of BESTSPORT: Petr Smutný (PwC), Jan Hrazdíra (HKDW Legal), Tomáš Richter (Clifford Chance), Jindřich Arabacz (Clifford Chance), Radim Baše (PwC), Libor Douděra (HKDW Legal).
The reorganization of BESTSPORT was closely associated with the complex restructuring of the Czech national lottery operator, SAZKA. As a result of the close cooperation between three teams, whose members are part of the Czech chapter of the TMA – PwC, acting as the economic advisor to BESTSPORT; Clifford Chance, acting as the legal advisor to major creditors of SAZKA and BESTSPORT who submitted the proposal for a creditor-driven reorganization and were appointed by the court to draw up and submit the reorganisation plan; and HKDW Legal, acting as the legal advisor to the insolvency administrator responsible for implementation of the reorganisation plan approved by the insolvency court – a successful and innovative turnaround of a company in insolvency proceedings was achieved.
The judges noted that this turnaround involved the hitherto unprecedented means of satisfying creditors’ claims in Czech insolvency proceedings through shares in successor organizations of the debtor. The case was precedential in proving on appeal that such a form of satisfying creditors is accepted by the Czech legal system and gave rise to a statutory intervention in January 2014 as part of a larger set of amendments to the Czech Insolvency Act.
Picture: Petr Smutný, Partner,Corporate finance and restructuring, PwC Czech Republic, who is also the chairman of the Czech branch of TMA, Kehren Oliver, CEO of Morgan Stanley in London, and Kolja von Bismarck, Senior Partner of Linklaters in Frankfurt
