David Bulley transferred to Appleby’s Hong Kong office in June 2020 after four and a half years in Appleby’s Cayman Islands office. David leads the Private Equity, Venture Capital and M&A practice areas as well as the office’s corporate restructuring, distressed debt and special situations practice specialising in Cayman law. In 2019 David completed in excess of USD35bn of M&A transactions and was named “Merger and Acquisitions Lawyer of the Year – Cayman Islands” by Lawyer Monthly for 2019 and “Corporate Finance Lawyer of the Year – Cayman Islands” by Finance Monthly and has added significant expertise to these areas in Asia following his transfer to the Hong Kong team.
David also has a leading creditor and debtor restructuring practice and has been instructed on many of the largest restructuring transactions during his time in Cayman, including as counsel to the ad hoc group of Creditors in Ocean Rig, the largest ever Cayman restructuring (USD3.2 billion) by way of scheme of arrangement, and for the Debtor in the restructuring of CHC Group Ltd. These two transactions were both awarded in Turnaround Altas Awards (2017) as Turnaround of the Year and Corporate Turnaround Deal of the Year respectively and in 2019 David was named “Most Trusted Corporate Restructuring Specialist – Cayman Islands” by CV Magazine.
David is praised by clients for his capability to “deal with different complex Cayman PE / M&A legal issues “and “explore different alternative legal solutions for complex transactions”. David is described as “incredibly practical and very results orientated”, “a quintessential lawyer’s lawyer” and their “favourite Cayman counsel”. Commenting on his recent relocation clients “believe he can help the Hong Kong legal community to understand more about Cayman law and the evolution of Cayman Law in the future”. Marcia Ellis, co-head of Asia Private Equity at Morrison & Foerster, who regularly instructs David on the Cayman law aspects of PE deals, also described David as “by far the best Cayman counsel I have encountered in my career”.
Managing Partner of the Hong Kong office, Cameron Adderley commented “David is a highly accomplished lawyer who adds tremendous value to every matter he is involved in. David combines attention to detail with a fiercely practical and unfailingly responsive approach and consequently is trusted and esteemed counsel to clients throughout USA, Europe and Asia. Congratulations David on this well-deserved recognition.”
