KSA Group is a corporate recovery firm with three licensed insolvency practitioners. 

Eric Walls and Wayne Harrison are licensed by the Insolvency Practitioners Association. 


Eric Walls gained his licence in 2002 and has been involved in many innovative turnarounds as well as hundreds of liquidations, administrations and bankruptcies across the whole of the UK.

Eric will give any potential new client free advice, a free meeting and most of all good guidance to the right options. He is based in Gateshead but can see anyone around the country.





Wayne Harrison has extensive experience of corporate and personal insolvency, consequently he was appointed by the IPA to oversee the regulation of insolvency practitioners. He joined the IPA in 2003 where he was part of the team that developed and implemented its Better Regulation Framework and he managed its regulatory operations for three years before making the decision to return to insolvency practice with KSA Group in 2009

Wayne's regulatory work at the IPA provided him with an insight into the workings of the insolvency industry. He believes that the rescue provisions of the insolvency legislation are currently under-used. Wayne shares Eric's ethos of giving the right advice and of providing assistance at the earliest opportunity in order to give ailing businesses the best chance to weather the current economic storm and turn their fortunes around.

Wayne will give any potential new client free advice, a free meeting and most of all good guidance to the right options


Professor Grant Jones (legal counsel KSA Group Ltd) LLM FCA Solicitor,
New York Attorney & Licensed Insolvency Practitioner.
 
Grant joined KSA Group Limited is the company secretary. He brings with him a wealth of insolvency and turnaround experience. Grant originally qualified as a Chartered Accountant with Ernst & Young. Having qualified as a Licensed Insolvency Practitioner, Grant established his own practice in the 80s. He was invited to be head of insolvency at a then top-20 accountancy practice, Morrison Stoneham, which became the first accountancy practice to float and it floated under the name of Tenon.

Having already obtained a Masters in insolvency law from London University, post-float Grant further qualified as a New York Attorney and Solicitor, and now practices both in insolvency law with a law firm, as in-house counsel to a distressed fund, and as accountant with a medium-sized accountancy firm.

Grant has advised on many CVA's, including one company, that went through a CVA debt-equity swap to become a highly successful operation. Grant understands, at the coalface, how the CVA process adds positive creditor and shareholder value.

A technical author, Grant has published a number of books on insolvency matters and is a Special Professor of Insolvency Law at Nottingham University. Actively involved in professional matters, Grant is President of the London Society of Chartered Accountants and a member of the Education, Courses and Conferences Committee of R3, the UK insolvency trade body.

So what does an insolvency practitioner actually do?

An insolvency practitioner is usually, although not always, a chartered accountant. A lawyer can also be an insolvency practitioner. The particular skill needed is the ability to look at complex financial situations which may be part of any business failure and try and come to a solution in the best interest of the creditors and the business.  They need to be experts in the complex law surrounding insolvency. 

The ability to be able to work with people is also important, as during a financial distress emotions can run high and the insolvency practitioner needs to be able to deal with the situation in an objective and professional way.

In an insolvency mechanism such as administration, liquidation or a company voluntary arrangement the roles of the insolvecy practitioner are different.


Administration

When a business goes into administration the administrators (who have to be licensed insolvency practitioners) effectively take over the running of the business on behalf of the directors or a secured creditor who has the power to appoint an administrator.  For more details on administration then please read our detailed administration page.  The aim of adminstration is to try and rescue the businesss and get the best result for the creditors.  This may mean the sale of the business and in many cases quite drastic measures like the shutting down of multiple outlets and making people redundant as the administrator is not legally allowed to run the business at a loss.

Liquidation  

In a liquidation the practitioner has to "liquidate" the assets of the business and distribute the proceeds as there is no hope of recovery.  The business is effectively shut down and the liquidator takes over the responsibility from the directors after a creditor's meeting has been held.  

A Voluntary Arrangement

A voluntary arrangement is a rescue plan and deal with the creditors proposed by the company that is effectively overseen by the insolvency practitioner.  In the first instance they have to be satisfied that the proposal is "fit, fair and feasible" before filing it at the court as the Nominee and then they oversee the "dividend" that the company is paying out to its creditors as the "Supervisor" of the arrangement.