Eleanor Stephens

Eleanor is a highly experienced senior insolvency solicitor, with nearly 30 years' specialist knowledge in all aspects of insolvency, both corporate and personal, covering contentious and non-contentious matters.

Before joining Harper James in 2020, Eleanor led Restructuring & Insolvency at LexisNexis, where she created Lexis PSL Restructuring & Insolvency, now a market-leading online guidance tool for insolvency lawyers. She remains a legal expert on the Lexis Ask Panel. Eleanor was also a partner and head of Business Recovery & Insolvency at a top 100 regional firm and completed a nine-month secondment with the Pensions Regulator, advising on insolvency-related pensions matters.

Eleanor uses her wide experience now in acting primarily for directors and business owners facing financial difficulties. She has a particular specialism helping directors in director disqualification proceedings, having acted for many years for the government, bringing disqualification prosecutions.

Work highlights include:

• Negotiating with the Insolvency Service to stop insolvency proceedings from commencing against a director of a multi business enterprise.
• Preventing a large retail corporation from being wound up by HMRC, working with the client and HMRC to reach an agreement.
• Advising and acting for directors of a company in insolvent liquidation regarding the re-use of the company name to avoid criminal and civil sanctions.
• Working with directors accused by liquidators of unpaid directors' loans and unlawful dividends, to reach an agreement of the parties to reduce the sums claimed as owed to the liquidation by more than two-thirds of the original claim.
• Working with directors accused by liquidators of preference and transaction at undervalue, to reach an agreement of the parties to reduce the sums claimed as owed to the liquidation by more than half of the claim.
• Negotiating and completing the sale of a company in administration, saving jobs and bringing money into the company for the creditors.
• Working with individual directors subject to personal guarantees to avoid bankruptcy and reach agreement on repayment.
• Working with corporations facing winding up to withdraw the petition against them.

"Working in this area with so many different stakeholders for different reasons over the years has given me a well-rounded insight into recovery and insolvency. What is important to one is not the priority of another. Working out what drives not only my clients, but also others such as banks, insolvency practitioners and government services, can really help in providing the right advice at the right time for my clients."

Eleanor lives in Florence, Italy, with her husband. When she’s not working, they indulge their passion for travelling. Eleanor also hugely enjoys all the great opportunities living in Tuscany has to offer.

"One of the things I most enjoy about my work is being able to work with corporate clients to help them when it looks like they have reached the point of no return. It gives me great satisfaction to be able to help a struggling company and its directors change its course and recover to continue successfully trading, with the knock-on benefits this has for the company’s staff and suppliers and other."