Sidley successfully represented Jervois Global Limited, an Australia-headquartered global supplier of advanced manufactured cobalt products with mining and refining operations, and certain affiliates in their prepackaged Chapter 11 cases filed on January 28, 2025 in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of Texas. The restructuring transactions enabled the once Australian publicly traded company to be taken private by existing secured lenders Millstreet Capital Management LLC, the company’s plan sponsor, and PenderFund Capital Management Ltd., providing for a $145 million new equity infusion and a reduction in funded debt from $195.5 million to approximately $31.6 million, significantly deleveraging the company’s balance sheet and positioning the company for go-forward success. The company confirmed its prepackaged plan on March 6, 2025, and, following a voluntary administration in Australia, emerged from Chapter 11 on May 9, 2025. Notably, the restructuring transaction is one of the first cross-border Australian take-private transactions implemented through a prepackaged Chapter 11 plan coupled with an Australian Deed of Company Arrangement.
The matter involved lawyers in New York, London, Chicago, Washington, D.C., Los Angeles, Tokyo, Houston, Dallas, Brussels, Hong Kong, Miami, and Boston. Brian Fahrney, Joe Michaels, and Anthony Grossi led the Sidley team which included Duston McFaul, Andrew Townsell, Weiru Fang, Chelsea McManus, Daniela Rakowski, Sydney Box, Jeffrey Butcher, Arianna Hall, Julia Jean Citron, and law clerks Jacob Lester and Vivian Li (Restructuring); James Crooks, Steven Rutkovsky, Nicholas Schwartz, Julie Ann Rosenberg Lamm, Horine Ye, Jacques Stivala, Henry Sasse, Hailey Zhang, Bill Turnbull, and law clerk Thomas Power (Global Finance); Travis Miller, Hannah Ellis, Lisa Holzman, Takeshi Funaki, and John Walker (M&A); Suresh Advani, Steve Quinn, Andrew Dibden, and Alice Qin (Tax); Sonia Gupta Barros (Capital Markets); Sven De Knop, James Mendenhall, and Alessandra Moroni (Global Arbitration, Trade and Advocacy); Vadim Brusser, Murray Reeve, Dominique Vletter, and trainee solicitor Jack Renner (Antitrust and Competition); John Skakun (Securities and Shareholder Litigation); and Eric Wolf (Employee Benefits and Executive Compensation).
