Find out what our Guest Bloggers are getting up to. Throughtout the year we will be following the progress of our Guest Bloggers as they find a placement or keep us updated as to what they are doing on their placement. Click here to read all entries from our bloggers or click here to meet them.

Everybody has gone to college. Well, not everybody but quite a number of the trainees are out at the moment studying for their ACA. After the first couple of months finding my way around the department, I have taken on a similar level of responsibility to the graduate trainees. This means that when they go to college, I often become responsible for their cases. This is quite good because it means I get a couple of weeks working on companies that I wouldn’t have come in to contact with otherwise.

I thought I should tell you a little about what you’re likely to get up to on a placement in R&R. You will almost certainly be working in corporate insolvency. This comes in a variety of flavours, all of which are available for you to experience. Most of my work has been in mid-corporate insolvency. This means working on a liquidation or administration of a ‘medium’ size company. For example, one of the cases that I’m working on is the administration of an AIM listed telecoms company that went under in August 2009.

You will be asked to perform a very wide variety of tasks. On the date that we are appointed (the partners are all insolvency practitioners) over a company, you might have the task of addressing the company’s workforce, or taking control of the company’s vehicles. Months later, you might find yourself reporting on the directors’ conduct or accounting for the sale of assets.

Some of the work I have been doing would be better described as large-complex insolvency. These are huge, sprawling cases that have a lot of people working on them! I have been working on the liquidation of an investment company based in Saudi Arabia, managed in Switzerland, registered in Virgin Islands, trading in London, with assets all over the world.

Harry