Euan Clarke

With some 25 years’ experience, Euan is one of the UK’s foremost insolvency specialists and leads Linklaters’ contentious restructuring and insolvency practice. 

His practice covers contentious and advisory insolvency and restructuring, banking disputes and fraud and regulatory investigations. He has particular experience advising banks, financial institutions, companies and insolvency practitioners in relation to contentious issues arising from complex restructuring, insolvency and corporate distress situations, especially those with a cross-border element. 

Euan is one of the core group of partners who has been advising the administrators of the Lehman Brothers companies in the UK since day one. Other significant cases include Bulb, Toys r Us, Enron, HMV, Woolworths, MG Rover, Game, Petroplus, Parmalat, Beaufort Securities, MF Global and IBRC (Anglo Irish Bank).

Euan is the Senior Board Member on the firm’s Partnership Board and has previously served as the firm’s Diversity & Inclusion partner and vice-chair of the Partnership Election Committee.  He is also a past-President of the Insolvency Lawyers’ Association.

Work highlights

Euan has acted on many of the most complex and high-profile restructuring and insolvency cases of the last 20 years. These include:

• Bulb: acting for the administrators of Bulb on the UK’s first energy supply company administration under the Energy Act.
• Caffè Nero: acting for Nero Holdings Limited, the principal UK operating entity within the group, on its recent CVA, including defending a challenge brought by landlord creditors.
• Intu Properties: advising on the restructuring and subsequent insolvency of the Intu group of companies.
• Lehman Brothers: leading on the initial administration applications in September 2008 and on numerous complex insolvency and contentious issues since, including cases in the Court of Appeal and Supreme Court.
• Steinhoff: advising the South African retail group on various aspects of its €10bn multi-jurisdictional restructuring.
• Agrokor: acting for a major creditor on a dispute in the English High Court relating to recognition of a Croatian process under the Cross Border Insolvency Regulations

Euan is former President of the Insolvency Lawyers Association and a member of the International Insolvency Institute. He has regularly spoken at industry events and writes on insolvency matters.

Euan joined Linklaters as a trainee and qualified in 1997. In 2006, Euan was elected as a Partner.

Euan graduated with honours in Law from the University of Nottingham and completed a Legal Practice course with distinction from Nottingham Law School. As part of his law degree, he studied for a year at the University of Texas School of Law.