William Swan

Counsel, Broadfield Asia

Counsel
Broadfield Asia

  • Co-leads the Special Situations & Distressed Financing Group, which operates as part of the Restructuring and Insolvency Practice.
  • With over 15 years of experience, William is known for his expertise in advising buy-side institutions and distressed investors on complex, stressed and distressed transactions, including both formal and out-of-court restructurings.
  • His areas of focus include advising on event-driven opportunities across a variety of asset classes and jurisdictions, opportunistic private credit, special situations investing, and complex trading of financial instruments.

About

William Swan’s practice is centred around financial restructuring and advising on distressed investments, on trading in distressed debt and other financial instruments, and on special situations and opportunistic credit. William has spent the majority of his career assisting buy-side institutions in their capacity as creditors and investors (often acting through ad hoc groups) on complex, cross-border situations, frequently subject to the insolvency and restructuring legal frameworks of the relevant jurisdictions. He brings specialist expertise and 24/7 global coverage to Broadfield.

During the course of his career, William has acted as in-house counsel for two investment managers, in each case as a member of those firms’ distressed investment teams. William has a commercial and operational familiarity with buy-side investors’ investment and trading strategies and processes. In these roles, William advised on financial restructurings and distressed, special situations and event-driven opportunities (including direct lending transactions) and structured, negotiated and drafted documentation for a range of complex, stressed and distressed transactions and trades spanning multiple asset classes and jurisdictions. Additionally, William has worked as a member of the senior analyst team on the par and distressed trading desk of a US-headquartered global bank.

William worked for two years in the Tokyo office of a major US law firm primarily assisting US and European buy-side clients with their investments and finance matters in Japan, including restructuring, special situations, and bankruptcy-related transactions. He holds a BA/MA from Cambridge University, a GDL from Nottingham Law School and an LPC qualification from the Oxford Institute of Legal Practice. He is fluent in Japanese and English.