‘There’s going to be a lot of distress on the high street,’ Weil, Gotshal & Manges partner Adam Plainer told Legal Business last autumn in an extended assessment of the City restructuring outlook. Given that insolvency lawyers have been confidently – and wrongly – predicting a flood of work since the banking crisis, such claims generally attract some scepticism. Yet the forces battering the high street did indeed in 2018 send a string of familiar names to the corporate vultures.
This summer’s collapse of Gaucho Group, the owner of premium Argentinian steak purveyors Gaucho and Cau, became only the latest casualty, amid a malaise that has seen dining and retail stalwarts struggle with shifting consumer behaviour and rising overheads.
Subscriber Access
You must be logged in to view full premium content.
