Elizabeth Downing

LIZ is a Corporate Restructuring associate with Skadden, Arps, Slate Meagher & Flom LLP and has advised debtors, creditors, equity sponsors, sellers, purchasers and other partiesin-interest in all stages of complex restructuring transactions, including prepackaged, prearranged and traditional chapter 11 cases, out-of-court workouts, distressed acquisitions and cross-border proceedings. She has experience counseling clients across a wide variety of industries, including health care, energy, financial services, shipping and retail. She clerked for Hon. Robert E. Gerber of the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York. Notably, she contributed extensively to the work done for ABI’s Final Report of the Commission to Study the Reform of Chapter 11.

Upon her graduation from Harvard, Liz began her career on Wall Street as a private investment analyst with Lehman Brothers. On Sept. 14, 2008, she found herself wondering, along with thousands of other Lehman Brothers employees, whether she would have a job the next day. She continued on with Barclays, which took on a significant portion of Lehman’s employees, but observed the impact on those senior to her, some of whom had lost their entire retirement savings in Lehman stock. She applied to law school that fall to become a bankruptcy lawyer. While many lost so much due to the Lehman filing, she feels fortunate to have had her career so fundamentally shaped by it.

Liz was selected in 2023 to the NextGen Leadership Program of the International Insolvency Institute in recognition of the leadership roles she has taken on in various multinational, complex cross-border insolvency cases. She acted as the lead associate on CFG Peru Investments Pte Ltd. (“China Fishery”), chapter 11 cases involving debtors from a dozen different jurisdictions across Asia, Europe and South America. She is currently actively involved in Skadden’s representation of Endo International plc, a specialty pharmaceutical company, and its affiliates in their transnational chapter 11 cases involving $7 billion of debt and mass tort claims. In addition to the leadership roles she takes on in various cases, she was recognized by her firm to join a cohort of 12 other women for the Women’s Leadership Forum, a rigorous leadership training program. She also previously co-chaired the Boston office’s women’s initiative. Through these efforts and more, she is inspired to continue creating greater gender equality in the insolvency profession, and she believes that significantly more work needs to be done around identifying the challenges and reasons for there not being more senior female lawyers, particularly at large law firms.