The NPL & Special Situations practice addresses institutional operators — banks, specialized funds, servicers, opportunistic investors — operating in the Italian and European distressed credit market and in corporate special situations. The Italian NPL market, after the disposal cycle of 2017-2022, is today a mature secondary market of 250-300 billion euros in residual stock, with pricing and process dynamics very different from the primary market.
The activity unfolds across three service families. NPL portfolio advisory: support in valuation phase (collateral review, perimeter, recovery curve), structuring of sale or securitization transactions, scenario modeling on recovery timelines, buy-side due diligence for secondary investors. Single name advisory: management of unitary positions above a certain threshold, where legal complexity (ongoing insolvency proceedings, restructuring agreements under art. 67 or 182-bis, out-of-court settlements) requires coordination among law firm, real estate valuer, restructuring advisor, and institutional investor.
Corporate special situations is the third line — carve-out of distressed assets, group restructurings with sale of non-strategic branches, turnaround operations with shareholder changes. Here the boundary with traditional M&A is subtle: the difference is that the target company is under financial or operational stress, and negotiation always includes components of debt renegotiation or involvement of institutional creditors. For NPL operators, the value proposition is an advisor who speaks both the language of credit recovery and that of M&A deal-making, avoiding the typical fragmentation of the sector into separate professional silos.
