Barry
Donohue

Who I Help

Secured creditors. Banks. Revenue. SMEs in financial distress. Creditors seeking recovery. Companies undergoing insolvency or restructuring.

How I Help

Corporate recovery and insolvency. Liquidations and receiverships. Creditor recovery strategy. Investigations. Asset realisation. Restructuring advice.

“SECURE OUTCOMES, THE REST WILL LOOK AFTER ITSELF.”

Barry Donohue is a Director of Restructuring Services at AAB, based in Cork, and has worked in corporate recovery since 1982. Barry works primarily in the SME recovery space, alongside bespoke assignments for secured creditors and Revenue, and is responsible for progressing realisations to secure the best outcome for creditors. He is known for his commitment to best practice, his creativity in finding recovery routes others might miss, and his focus on developing the people around him.

Four Decades of Corporate Recovery

My typical week is varied, made up of progressing many assignments simultaneously as well as meeting prospective and new clients. A key element is ensuring that realisations are progressed to secure the best outcome for creditors, who are the real clients. A week may involve determining the best strategy for a typical insolvent assignment geared towards maximising realisations, as well as progressing investigations.

I have been involved in corporate recovery since 1982 on a part-time basis, moving to the arena permanently in 1983. The work has always involved a genuine sense of achievement, and that has stayed with me throughout my career.

Best Practice, No Shortcuts

It is clear to me, after many years, that following best practice invariably secures the best outcome for instructing creditors. Shortcuts don’t work. I.

Teamwork Built on Trust

It may sound clichéd, but teamwork is the most significant quality I believe contributes to securing good outcomes, and specifically teamwork based on trust and a willingness to share experiences to help team members develop themselves.

Trust Opens Doors

Trust is the one non-negotiable when it comes to building a relationship with a new client. Over the course of 2009 to 2012, I developed some strong relationships with bank recovery officers, securing strong outcomes for the banks concerned, and those successes led to further assignments. Two things mattered most: trust in the instructing party, and an ability to communicate openly so that everyone knew what we were trying to achieve.

One relationship in particular stood out. Some years after that workflow had diminished, a bank contacted me to take an appointment as a receiver by way of equitable execution. It required me to reach out to a previously unknown third party, get that party to speak openly with me and make a statement I could rely on. That statement enabled me to secure an injunction preventing a third party from moving finances, and from there the recovery turned out to be fast and substantial for the bank concerned.

It’s All About Outcomes

For me, the most satisfying aspect of working with clients is all about outcomes. What stands out as most rewarding about being part of both our team and the wider AAB organisation is seeing the team, which has grown some 110% since I joined, and AAB as a whole grow, giving rise to polished leaders and increasingly skilled colleagues delivering the services that clients want.

Recovery in Practice

On a recent liquidation instruction from Revenue, it became clear we could use a golden share to take control of a connected company. We did so, moved a property asset owned by that connected company on for sale, and secured a full recovery of an inter-company balance owed, with further recoveries likely.

One historic example that stands out relates to an assignment from the late 1990s, where I was involved in advising a local authority in the UK on its response to the insolvency administration of a well-known football club by which it was owed money. By taking the right advice from a solicitor skilled in conveyancing law, we moved the authority from being an unsecured creditor to a priority creditor who had to be paid in full, otherwise the administration would have failed. The lesson for me was that taking advice from specialists is a prerequisite of good advice. The greatest compliment I have received came from a former partner in a firm, who referred a lot of work our way over the years and said he came to the firm, and to me, because we knew what we were doing, were value for money, and he could refer clients on with confidence. Trust, again, is the word that mattered most

Fighting for Better Outcomes

One of the greatest challenges in my specialist area is the battle between what I consider poor statutory systems and securing good outcomes. The Irish restructuring system, both personal and corporate, has become a debtor-driven process in which securing as little as possible for creditors is often the goal. I aim to identify recovery routes that improve outcomes for stakeholders regardless.

A common misconception about my profession is that insolvency practitioners are all the same. In reality, many work to achieve genuine outcomes for creditors, while others focus on excessive fees and underhand methods. My top strengths are being out-of-the-box in my thinking, creative, and trustworthy, and earlier in my career I was particularly good at developing contacts. Looking ahead, I would like to see, and be involved in, the use of AI to develop systems for unravelling antecedent transactions and reckless trading, both economically and quickly.