Seward & Kissel has lured an experienced restructuring lawyer from competitor Chadbourne & Parke.
Robert Gayda joins Seward & Kissel as counsel in New York. Gayda’s practice is heavily creditor-focused, with a broad base of clients including banks, hedge funds, bondholders, creditors’ committees, and lenders’ agents.
Besides having worked on restructuring matters at Chadbourne, Gayda brings significant in-house experience to his new role. In 2009 and 2010, Gayda was on a secondment to the global restructuring practice at Royal Bank of Scotland. “There, I was focused on working out various distressed credits that the restructuring group faced on a day-to-day basis,” he said.
In a discussion with IFLR1000, Gayda reflected on the downturn in the resources sector and some of the consequences of this phenomenon for other industries and sectors.
“Looking at the market, you see the exploration and production companies already suffering from an oil and gas perspective. Naturally, you’ll see oilfield service companies and other companies supporting that industry go through difficulties in the future,” Gayda said.
“The restructuring market had been somewhat quiet for a while, but with oil and gas issues, there’s certainly been an uptick in industry activity from a restructuring perspective,” he added.
Gayda holds a J.D. from the University of Pennsylvania Law School and a B.A. from West Virginia University.