Karol Czepukojć

Karol focuses mainly on cross-border and local court restructuring and insolvency matters, as well as on debt recoveries and commercial contracts. He advises all stakeholders, in particular debtors, creditors, security agents, insolvency practitioners and investors in distressed assets.

Karol's assistance includes:

• directors' duties on insolvency
• court restructuring and insolvency strategies, including evaluation of security packages
• loan-to-own strategies and other distressed M&A transactions
• drafting, mitigating of insolvency risk and negotiating of commercial contracts, in particular in the context of supply chains and transactions
• all debt recovery strategies, especially enforcement of security packages and asset tracing

Prior to joining the Firm, Karol handled the following types of matter:

• Advised a main financing creditor, being a Polish bank, in drafting and negotiation with regard to a successful out-of-court arrangement with its debtor, a company listed on the Warsaw Stock Exchange, undergoing court restructuring.
• Advised and represented a main financing creditor and security agent, being a TOP 3 bank in Poland, in court restructuring and bankruptcy proceedings of its debtor, being a bond issuer and company listed on the Warsaw Stock Exchange.
• Advised the leading financial leasing provider in Poland during one of the largest pre-packaged sales of distressed assets in Poland, made during the bankruptcy proceedings of a lessee from the airline industry.
• Advised and represented a main financing creditor, being a TOP 3 bank in Poland, in debt recovery against an insolvent debtor, being a clothes producer, its partners and new owners of a few encumbered pieces of real estate (under promissory notes, against collaterals and guarantors), including debtor’s asset tracing and defending the client against debtor’s court restructuring applications.
• Advised a furniture production company, a member of a French capital group, in its cross-border insolvency proceedings, which included main proceedings in France (a court restructuring), secondary proceedings in Poland (bankruptcy proceedings), several dozen debt recoveries and a procedure before the European Court of Justice.
• Advised and represented the Danish trustees of one of the world’s largest manufacturers of flat-packed furniture in bankruptcy, and its Polish subsidiary on the court restructuring strategy for the Polish entity, and on the subsequent implementation of a Polish scheme of arrangement providing for the acquisition of a Polish business by a new investor.
• Advised a leading real estate fund on the loan-to-own strategy of the acquisition of a bankrupt’s business (including a hotel in Warsaw) using receivables acquired from a bank that was previously financing the bankrupt.
• Advised a worldwide leading company from the sanitary facilities industry on a distressed assets’ transaction (production equipment), made within the bankruptcy proceedings of a Polish company from the same industry.
• Advised the English administrators of a tourist operator in administration in relation to the liquidation of all its Polish assets and activities (being a branch holding a shared services center with approx. 300 employees).
• Advised an international steel construction company on commercial contract matters, including how to secure the effective transfer of ownership and receipt of steel structures from its Polish sub-contractor at the pre-bankruptcy stage.

• Rising Star, Restructuring and Insolvency in Poland, Legal 500 EMEA 2020
• Next Generation Lawyer, Restructuring and Insolvency in Poland, Legal 500 EMEA 2019

• INSOL International (Member)
• INSOL Europe (Member)
• R3 - The Association of Business Recovery Professionals (Full Member, MABRP)
• The Association of Restructuring Professionals in Poland (Member)
• The National Chamber of Restructuring Advisers (Member)
• Warsaw Bar Association (Member)