Resolve Guarantee is a team of commercial barristers who are highly experienced and skilled in defending guarantee claims. If you have entered into a personal guarantee securing lending to your own business or that of a friend or family member and face potentially onerous obligations as a result, contact our barristers today.
Once a judgment has been obtained, your creditor may apply for charging orders over your assets, including your home, and potentially obtain an order for sale. Your creditor may decide instead to petition for your bankruptcy which would have very significant consequences for you, not least the loss of control over your financial assets and automatic disqualification as a director.
As a group of specialist barristers, we are able to draw on an excellent breadth and depth of experience which will allow us to identify and exploit any weaknesses in the claim to enforce your guarantee. We also work extensively with small and medium sized businesses and in the insolvency field, so we have first-hand experience of how difficult things can be for individuals and businesses when things do not go to plan, and creditors look to enforce guarantees.
We specialise in personal guarantee disputes and get straight to the issues, so that you can save time, money and hassle.
We advise and act on direct access terms, providing clarity and transparency about what we can do for you, and at a fixed fee for each agreed piece of work, so that you can have peace of mind.
With us you get a determined, experienced and skilled team of negotiators, so that you can be confident of having the best chance of obtaining a favourable settlement on negotiated terms with your creditor.
Lloyd has extensive experience of dealing with all issues arising in disputes about the enforceability of guarantees. Whether the approach a guarantor wishes to take is playing for time, reducing the sum that will ultimately be payable or escaping liability altogether, Lloyd has experience of litigating each approach to a conclusion.
Lloyd is regularly instructed to act for high street and sub-prime lenders, peer-to-peer lenders and lenders in administration. Lloyd assists them to enforce their loan book which involves numerous pieces of litigation concerning the validity of guarantees. This experience gives Lloyd an advantage when acting for guarantors, particularly when defending claims made by the UK’s big four banks. He has used this knowledge and experience to assist clients to achieve helpful compromises at mediation, in direct negotiations and during the litigation process.
Ruhi regularly advises company directors and lenders on the enforceability of personal guarantees provided by company directors as security for loans. This regularly involves resisting claims made by lenders as well as pursuing company directors on behalf of lenders including banks and insolvency practitioners.
Most recently, Ruhi has successfully defended proceedings brought by a construction company seeking to recover sums due in respect of unpaid invoices. The company sought to recover the sums against the director of the company to whom the invoices were issued. The claim was defended on the basis that there were onerous conditions in the guarantee rendering it unenforceable and that the director was induced into entering into the guarantee by an implied misrepresentation.
Nathan is a commercial barrister who often encounters guarantees in the context of his extensive insolvency work. He has a sound knowledge of the legal bases upon which an individual or legal entity can challenge a creditor’s attempts to invoke and rely upon a guarantee.
Nathan’s recent experience includes:
Acting for two individuals in which they were seeking to set aside statutory demands which were based on guarantees that had been entered into in respect of a loan obtained by a company that the individuals were directors and shareholders in. The case involved consideration of the circumstances when a demand is required as a pre-requisite to serving a statutory demand in respect of a purported liability under a guarantee.
Susanne Muth is a senior barrister and former investment banker specialising in financial services and banking litigation work. One core area of Susanne’s practice concerns recovery actions for loans and enforcement of guarantees (typically directors’ personal guarantees, supporting their companies’ borrowing). She regularly advises and acts for defendants in loan recovery and guarantee enforcement claims. She also knows the lenders’ arguments and approach in such proceedings, appearing regularly for a major peer-to-peer lender in enforcing directors’ guarantees. Her breadth of experience (in acting for lenders and debtors alike) has proved to be particularly valuable when conducting settlement negotiations for her clients. The Legal 500 directory has described her as “a formidable counsel who you would want on your side” [2021], “a strong advocate who gets the court on side” [2020], “extremely bright, straight-talking and very good with clients” [2017].
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David McIlroy has particular expertise in dealing with guarantees of commercial loans, especially in the property investment and development sectors. He provides clear strategic advice on how guarantees may be challenged or enforced. He is often instructed to act in cases where fraud is alleged, in cases where a lender has acted in bad faith and in cases involving a sham. He also advises on the drafting of guarantees and the potential liabilities a guarantor may be exposed to as a result of giving a guarantee.
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