Profile: R Neal Batson

Insolvency and Restructuring

Biography: Insolvency & Restructuring

R Neal Batson is special counsel to Alston & Bird. In 2002 he was appointed by the Department of Justice as examiner for Enron, and was authorised to investigate various aspects of the company that filed one of the most prominent and complex chapter 11 cases in American history. Earlier in his career, he served as the court-appointed examiner in the Southmark Corporation case in Dallas, which - until Enron - was the largest examination in American history.

Mr Batson's practice has concentrated on bankruptcy, commercial litigation, creditors' rights, workouts, business reorganisations and corporate restructuring. He also serves as an ADR neutral in mediation, arbitration and case evaluation; and has served as lead counsel to debtors, creditors' committees, equity holders, and secured lenders in numerous chapter 11 cases.

Mr Batson is a past chair of the American College of Bankruptcy and a Fellow of the American College of Trial Lawyers. He is a former director of the Association of Insolvency and Restructuring Advisors, a director emeritus and former president of the Southeastern Bankruptcy Law Institute and - at the request of the chief justice of the United States Supreme Court - has served on the Advisory Committee on the Rules of Bankruptcy Procedure of the Judicial Conference of the United States.

Mr Batson is a graduate of Vanderbilt University, where he was editor-in-chief of Vanderbilt Law Review and a member of the Order of the Coif. He was a law clerk to Judge Griffin B Bell, US Court of Appeals, Fifth Circuit, who subsequently became attorney general of the United States.