Romain de Ménonville

I am a partner in the Restructuring & Insolvency practice in Bird & Bird's Paris office. We focus on advising creditors in challenging contexts: preventive restructuring proceedings, refinancing, insolvency proceedings, and insolvency related litigation.

I began my career working in a global law firm right before the 2008 Lehman Brothers's Crisis, which introduced me to challenging cases such as Terreal, HMY, Auto-distribution, Coeur Défense and Novasep.

I have over ten years' experience working in restructuring for global law firms and in the banking industry (Paris and New York restructuring teams of Natixis SA). I am one of the few lawyers in Paris to act as regular counsel for pools of banks in restructuring, and I am particularly well positioned to advise banks, debt funds and financial institutions.

I am also vastly experienced in the Retail & Automotive sector, where I have advised many of the historical players impacted by the digital revolution. I also advise clients who want to purchase distressed companies or assets in the course of insolvency proceedings, especially in respect to distressed LBOs.

I recently advised the financial institutions during the restructuring of Mecachrome, the banks in the restructuring of Groupe Royer, a pool of creditors of Pierre & Vacances, financial institutions during the insolvency proceedings of Europacorp, Rallye Celio and Vallourec, the Trustee during the insolvency proceedings of CGG.

• Advising Bank of New-York Mellon as Trustee in the restructuring of CGG (debt of 1.6 billion USD)
• Advising a pool of 9 banks in the restructuring of Groupe Royer
• Advising the banks in the restructuring of Mecachrome
• Advising a pool of creditors in the restructring of Pierre & Vacances
• Advising financial institutions in the insolvency proceedings of Celio, Rallye, Europacorp, Vallourec
• Advising a European bank in relation to the restructuring of a rail transportation company in Africa
• Advising a global automobile supplier in relation to the insolvency of its main subsidiary in France
• Advising global automobile manufacturers and suppliers in managing affairs related to strategic suppliers in difficulty