Distressed Diaries — Hardly fair? The evolution of English restructuring plans

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The English courts have been called upon several times in the last few years to reevaulate what should be considered fair in Part 26A restructuring plans.

Within 2025, the Court of Appeal handed down two key decisions on distressed utility company Thames Water and upstream energy engineering firm Petrofac’s restructuring plans.

Those decisions, combined with another Court of Appeal decision handed down last year on German real estate group Adler’s restructuring plan, have reconfigured the approach to assessing whether a restructuring is fair.

There are now new tests for evaluating whether a restructuring plan is fair, and a focus on fair allocation and what contributions stakeholders are making to the restructuring, as well as what they get out.

To unpack recent trends in Part 26A restructuring plans and what the recent Court of Appeal decisions mean for the future of UK restructuring plans, 9fin’s Will Macadam sat down Kirkland & Ellis partners Kate Stephenson and Kon Asimacopoulos, and David Allison KC of South Square.