100 Wellington St W, Suite 3200, PO Box 329, Toronto-Dominion Ctr, Toronto, ON
Year called to bar: 1984 (ON)
John is a partner of TGF and has a broad practice in complex commercial litigation with significant experience in insolvency and restructuring litigation. He has been lauded as a "spectacular lawyer in huge insolvency proceedings" and "a very credible, no-nonsense litigator who is extremely effective in court" in Chambers Global. He has been recognized in The Lexpert/American Lawyer Guideto the Leading 500 Lawyers in Canada and listed as Repeatedly Recommended in Litigation – Corporate Commercial in Lexpert. John currently is lead counsel for PwC as Receiver of Bridging Financial and was senior litigation counsel representing the Trustees of the UK Pension Plan in successfully obtaining a groundbreaking pro rata allocation among the global Nortel Networks insolvency estates following an unprecedented joint trial of the Canadian and US Courts, over $7.3 billion in asset sale proceeds. John was appointed by the Superior Court to represent 630,000 policyholders of Economical Insurance and led a successful negotiation with a competing group of policyholders on the allocation of $2 billion in expected demutualization benefits. He is a Founding Director of Worldwide Orphans Foundation Canada with more than $1.2 million raised for orphan relief.
Nortel Networks Corporation (Nortel Canada) is the Canadian parent company of what was one of the largest telecommunications businesses in the world. In early 2009, formal insolvency proceedings were commenced in Canada, the United States and England, among other places. Nortel’s worldwide business was liquidated through a number of Court-approved sales of its business units and a US$4.5-billion sale of its residual patents, resulting in US$7.3 billion of global sale proceeds to be allocated amongst the Nortel debtor companies in Canada, the United States and Europe.
Nelson Education Ltd. (Nelson), Canada’s leading education publishing company, completed a sale of substantially all of its assets to 682534 N.B. Inc., now operating as Nelson Education Ltd., in exchange for the compromise and release of approximately US$270 million of first lien secured debt obligations.
