Harris Waseem Director - Restructuring and Insolvency

Harris is a qualified Chartered Accountant, a restructuring professional and co-leads our special situation group. He has 20 years of experience supporting and advising in situations of rapid change, underperformance or crisis. He regularly advises secured lenders, shareholders, boards of directors and pension schemes in turnaround and restructuring situations.

Experience 

Prior to joining the firm, Harris spent time working within both the Big 4 and more recently a mid-tier accountancy firm. He has also undertaken two separate bank secondments; with HSBC Bank (Large Corporate) and FBN Bank (a leading pan-African bank), where he was the acting head of workout with oversight of the bank’s non-performing loan book.

Harris operates across all sector segments but specialises in distressed infrastructure (PFI / PPP) transactions, the UK outsourcing market and the UK franchise / casual dining market. In addition, he is experienced with special situation M&A engagements, where a flexible and hands-on approach is needed to unlock value in an often complex/non-standard M&A scenario.

Harris is a leader within our Special Situations Group (SSG). This is a multi-disciplinary national team that includes M&A, Debt advisory, Transaction support, Valuations, Tax, and Restructuring. The SSG is focused on supporting clients with transactions that typically feature an element of financial distress, require strong stakeholder engagement, and have a requirement to deliver across multiple professional disciplines and in an accelerated time frame.

Work Highlights 

Selected projects include:

Distressed infrastructure (PFI/PPP):

• Financial diligence, options analysis, and ultimately consensual termination of one of the largest UK PFI waste transactions.
• Financial diligence, options analysis, and negotiation support in respect of a group of Iberian toll road assets.
• Options analysis and renegotiation support in respect of material changes to the payment mechanism in connection with a UK waste water transaction.

UK outsourcing:

• Financial diligence, strategic options review, and ultimately sale/transition of significant parts of the business to new acquirers.
• Financial diligence and negotiation support to a key creditor in a complex rescue refinancing, restructuring and supporting of the client in respect of the sale of a business to a large listed trade buyer.

UK franchise/casual dining:

• Various pre-lend reviews to support growth and transformation in the UK franchise sector.
• Going concern review of a high profile UK restaurant group in order to determine adequacy of forecast financial liquidity.