Member Voices: Mohamed Bouzenada

Briefly describe your role.

I am a Partner and Head of the Restructuring & Insolvency Department at Soulier Bunch, an independent full-service law firm with offices in Paris and Lyon. The firm was formed in October 2025 through the merger of Bunch and Soulier Avocats, bringing together a dedicated team of lawyers across a broad range of practice areas and industry sectors.

My practice focuses on advising distressed companies, their shareholders and management, creditors, and investors across the full spectrum of French restructuring proceedings, from out-of-court preventive mechanisms (mandat ad hoc, conciliation) to court-supervised reorganizations (sauvegarde, redressement judiciaire) and liquidation proceedings. I also have extensive experience in distressed M&A, including court-supervised asset sales and competitive auction processes, where I represent both strategic and financial buyers seeking acquisition opportunities in France.

A significant portion of my work involves cross-border situations, advising foreign parent companies and international stakeholders navigating the French insolvency framework, and I regularly work in both French and English. 

I am also a lecturer in restructuring law at EMLYON Business School and an active member of IFPPC (Institut Français des Praticiens des Procédures Collectives) and P&R (Prévention et Retournement), two of France's leading professional associations in the insolvency and turnaround space.

How has teaching at EMLYON Business School shaped the way you approach your practice?

Teaching forces clarity. You must distill complex mechanisms into frameworks that business students, future executives, and entrepreneurs can actually use in real-life decision-making. That discipline feeds directly back into my practice: when I advise a CEO navigating a crisis or present a case to a commercial court, the ability to make the complex accessible is a decisive advantage.

What I did not expect when I started teaching was how much I would learn from my students. They challenge assumptions, bring fresh perspectives from their own industries and geographies, and ask the kinds of foundational questions that seasoned practitioners sometimes stop asking. Although I am the one standing at the front of the room, the exchange is far from one-sided. Their energy and curiosity genuinely sharpen the way I think about my own practice. It's an invaluable counterbalance to the pace and intensity of day-to-day restructuring work.

You will be attending your first WLG | summit in Singapore next month. What are you most looking forward to, and how do you see this experience supporting your broader practice or relationships within the network?

Honestly, I'm most looking forward to putting faces to names. I've been exchanging emails and referrals with WLG colleagues for months, and there's no substitute for sitting down together and getting to know each other beyond practice areas and jurisdictions. That's where real trust is built, and trust is what makes a network actually work when a client calls with an urgent cross-border matter.

Beyond the personal connections, I'm genuinely curious to hear how lawyers in other practice areas and other parts of the world are navigating the challenges their clients face, whether it's regulatory shifts, market disruption, or the increasing complexity of cross-border transactions. Restructuring doesn't exist in a vacuum: some of the best insights I've gained in my career have come from conversations with corporate, employment, or banking lawyers who see the same companies from a completely different angle.

And of course, Singapore itself is a pretty compelling destination for a first summit. I have a feeling the setting will make the conversations even better.

You share a Weekly Selection of Distressed M&A Opportunities in France on the WLG website. How has this contributed to your visibility or client engagement, and what would you suggest to others considering a similar approach?

The Weekly Selection was born from a simple observation: when a company enters court-supervised proceedings in France, the window for submitting an acquisition offer is extremely tight. Foreign investors and their counsel often lack visibility on these opportunities. By curating and sharing these opportunities each week through the WLG platform, I position Soulier Bunch as a gateway for international buyers seeking French distressed assets, and I give WLG members a concrete, actionable reason to refer clients our way.

The impact has been tangible: it has generated real inbound interest and positioned our firm as a go-to contact for distressed M&A in France within the network. My advice to others considering a similar approach would be simple: share deal flow, not just expertise. Lawyers are flooded with newsletters and legal updates. What gets attention and builds real relationships is giving people something they can act on.

Outside of your professional work, what do you enjoy doing to recharge?

Running is my main outlet. I've run two marathons recently, and the training process is oddly similar to what we do in restructuring: you prepare, you endure, and you push through when it gets uncomfortable. The discipline, the long runs, the mental battle in the final kilometers. It keeps me grounded.

I'm also a passionate ski touring enthusiast. In France, we are lucky to have incredible mountains, and I head to the Alps whenever I can. There's something deeply restorative about earning your turns, climbing in silence through fresh snow before skiing down untouched terrain. It's the best reset I know.

Photography is my quieter passion. I'm a devoted Leica collector and shooter, both with film and digital cameras. There's a meditative quality to shooting with a rangefinder. It forces you to slow down, compose deliberately, and really see what's in front of you. The exact opposite of the pace I keep at work, and that's precisely why I love it.

But the most important thing by far is spending time with my two wonderful children. They have an extraordinary ability to remind you what actually matters, and to make sure you never take yourself too seriously.