Brendan
Colgan
Partner
Brendan is a partner in the Disputes and Investigations Group at Matheson and is Head of the Corporate Restructuring and Insolvency Law Group.
Brendan has extensive experience in advising companies, directors, shareholders, insolvency practitioners and creditors on contentious and non-contentious multi-jurisdictional corporate restructuring and insolvency matters.
Experience and Education
- Advising Norwegian Air in connection with its successful restructuring through parallel Irish and Norwegian court processes (and recognised in the US under Chapter 15 of the US Bankruptcy Code).
- Advising Weatherford International plc in connection with its successful restructuring through US (Chapter 11 of the US Bankruptcy Code) and Irish (examinership) parallel processes – this was the first such case where this was done.
- Advising cross-class creditor group in relation to successful restructuring of Mallinckrodt plc through US (Chapter 11 of the US Bankruptcy Code) and Irish (examinership) parallel processes.
- Advising on all Companies Act applications, including high profile solvent corporate restructurings and domestic mergers and take-over schemes of arrangement, recent examples of which include Amgen’s acquisition of Horizon Therapeutics in 2023 and the Smurfit WestRock merger in 2024.
- Advising the examiners appointed to The Workman’s Club Limited and Cityjet.
- Advising the liquidators appointed to Debenhams Retail Ireland Limited and New Look Retailers (Ireland) Limited.
- Advising the liquidators appointed to PFS Card Services Ireland Limited, the first electronic money licensed company to be wound up in Ireland.
- Advising on numerous mergers, divisions and conversions under the European Union Cross-Border Mobility Regulations, including the cross-border merger of Citibank Europe plc with a number of its European sister companies in 2009, which was the first cross-border merger into Ireland.
- Advising private equity firms in relation to sponsor led exit strategies.
- Advising financial institutions and private equity firms in relation to the enforcement of security, recovery of debt and enforcement options (including bankruptcy) with extensive experience in advising in connection with both High Court and commercial court proceedings.
- Advising directors and shareholders of companies on corporate governance and compliance issues and on matters relating to the Corporate Enforcement Authority, restriction and / or disqualification proceedings, oppression and shareholder disputes.
- University of Galway, B Corp. Law, LLB
- Law Society of Ireland
- Brendan is a former Council member of Restructuring & Insolvency Ireland (formerly known as the Irish Society of Insolvency Practitioners) and is also a member of INSOL Europe and the American Bankruptcy Institute.
- Brendan lectures on insolvency law matters on the professional practice courses of the Incorporated Law Society of Ireland.
