Sidley Austin—Kieran Sharma

Sidley Austin LLP has announced that Kieran Sharma has rejoined the global Restructuring group as a partner in London. The addition of Mr Sharma follows the recent arrival of Stephen E. Hessler as the firm’s new global practice leader for the Restructuring group.

Mr Sharma joins Sidley from the global investment firm Strategic Value Partners (SVP) where he was a Director in its European investment team, focusing on credit, distressed debt and private equity opportunities. Prior to joining SVP, Mr. Sharma worked for three years in Sidley’s Restructuring group in London as a senior associate.

Mr Sharma’s practice involves working closely with private equity, hedge funds, and other investors (including creditors and debtors) providing advice on strategic investments across the capital structure, as well as the acquisition and restructuring of distressed businesses.

Sidley’s global Restructuring group includes more than 60 lawyers—including seven partners in Europe and Asia—working on the largest and most complex cross-border insolvency mandates. In 2022, Sidley was company counsel in many of the largest restructurings worldwide, including 11 matters with funded debt liabilities of more than US$1 billion. Since mid-2020, in China’s distressed property sector, Sidley by far led the legal counsel rankings with 19 company-side restructuring appointments.

'Kieran is a highly talented lawyer focused on providing innovative solutions for our clients. His work at SVP included some of the most notable cross-border restructurings of the COVID cycle and deepened his relationships within the distressed investment community,” said Stephen E. Hessler, global practice leader of the Restructuring group. 'His return significantly advances our goal of growing our market-leading global Restructuring practice.'

'We are seeing increasing headwinds on a global scale as the cycle begins to turn—which will present opportunities and challenges for our clients across the capital structure,' said Mark Knight, co-head of Sidley’s restructuring practice in London and Asia. 'Kieran brings an investor mindset from his time on the buy-side that we know will resonate with our clients, and adds further depth and experience to our growing restructuring practice.'

Adding to this, Jifree Cader, co-head of Sidley’s restructuring practice in London and Asia said, 'Our global restructuring group, and in particular our London practice, experienced a very busy 2022. We have seen the restructuring group—across Europe, the U.S., and Asia—add an impressive number of new high-profile mandates. I am excited to have Kieran return, alongside the arrival of a number of talented associates who have recently joined our global team—doubling the number of associates in just over a year.'