Mark Craggs

Practice Areas

Mark Craggs is a restructuring and insolvency lawyer based in London.

Mark advises UK and international insolvency office-holders, banks and other creditors, corporates, directors, pension scheme trustees, government bodies, regulators and other stakeholders on a wide range of contentious and non-contentious matters. His practice focuses primarily on formal and cross-border insolvency matters and he commonly advises on:

matters arising in UK and international insolvency proceedings;

recognition applications and matters relating to cross-border insolvency assistance of foreign courts and insolvency office-holders;

contingency planning and security enforcement, including the appointment of receivers;

directors' duties, wrongful trading and the disqualification of directors;

office-holder investigations and claims;

security and other proprietary interests (including the establishment of trust arrangements);

close-out netting and set-off issues;

schemes of arrangement;

specialist insolvency regimes, including investment bank special administration;

distressed M&A;

distressed loan sales;

exit-routes from insolvency proceedings;

solvent terminal procedures and restoration applications; and

issues arising in consensual workouts, including in relation to lender liability.

His work frequently involves EU insolvency law and the laws of other jurisdictions, including the various national enactments of the UNCITRAL Model Law on Cross-Border Insolvency.

Mark has extensive experience in a number of key industry sectors, including financial institutions, transport (including aviation, shipping and rail), energy, mining, construction and infrastructure.

Mark has recently been advising directors, creditors and counterparties in relation to several high-profile UK corporate collapses, advising on a number of company voluntary arrangements and schemes of arrangement in respect of UK and foreign debtors, and acting on multiple recognition and related applications, including representing dry-bulk shipping company Daiichi Chuo KK in obtaining recognition of its Japanese civil rehabilitation proceedings in the UK, the US, Canada and Australia under the applicable local enactments of the UNCITRAL Model Law.

Mark's reported cases include:

Maxwell Communication Corporation plc (in administration) [2016] EWHC 2200 (Ch) (acting for the administrators of Maxwell on the closure of various administration proceedings and schemes of arrangement that had been ongoing since the early-1990s);

the Lehman Brothers "Extended Liens" (Re Lehman Brothers International (Europe) (in administration) [2012] EWHC 2997 (Ch)) and "Client Money" cases (Re Lehman Brothers International (Europe) (in administration) [2012] UKSC 6) (acting for the trustee for the liquidation of Lehman Brothers Inc.); and

McGrath v Riddell [2008] UKHL 21 (acting for the Australian liquidators of the HIH Insurance Group in their appeal to the House of Lords in relation to section 426 of the Insolvency Act 1986).

Mark is a Fellow of INSOL International and a member of a number of committees of INSOL International (including the Technical Research Committee and the Younger Members Committee), as well as co-editor of INSOL World, a quarterly publication. He is a member of the International Insolvency Institute's NextGen Leadership Program, the Insolvency Lawyers' Association and the Association of Business Recovery Professionals (R3). In 2016, he was selected as one of the '40 Under 40' cross-border restructuring and insolvency lawyers worldwide by Global Restructuring Review.

Mark is listed as a Next Generation Lawyer in The Legal 500 and has been described in that directory as an "excellent all-round insolvency lawyer" (2017) and a "'proactive and thorough'... 'emerging talent' whose 'understanding of the pressures and nuances on the various stakeholders ensures that matters… which he handles are dealt with in a commercially pragmatic way'" (2018). The Legal 500 2020 praises Mark for his "very practical and commercial" as well as "measured and sensible" approach, and recognised that he is developing a strong reputation for a range of stakeholders, particularly on cross-border matters.

Mark has written extensively on the subject of insolvency law, including contributions to Lightman & Moss on The Law of Administrators and Receivers of Companies, Sweet & Maxwell, 6th Edn, 2017 (chapters on Leases and Trusts).