David F.W. Cohen

About David F.W. Cohen

David F.W. Cohen works where lending meets financial distress. As a Toronto partner at Gowling WLG, David heads the firm's Financial Institutions & Services Group across Canada, co-leads its global Financial Industry Group and coordinates Distressed M&A nationally. The work blends corporate and commercial financing with restructuring and insolvency, both inside Canada and across borders, and lenders are regular clients on restructuring and insolvency files. Recent mandates have included restructuring a big agricultural producer and manufacturer, winding down or reorganizing several large Canadian retail chains, and restructurings in mining and in oil and gas.

A Memorial University of Newfoundland commerce graduate, David went on to an LLB at Osgoode Hall, was called to the Ontario bar in 1992 and made partner in 1998. Along the way at Gowling, David has run a department, overseen the firm's finances and led its restructuring group, and now steers its financial services work in Canada and internationally. For five years, until 2001, David also taught bankruptcy law at Osgoode as a visiting instructor, and today sits on the CCH Corporate Law Advisory Board.

Turnaround professionals, and the jobs and companies they save, have a committed advocate in David, who's pushed DIP lending and creative financing as ways back to health. David spent years in leadership at the Turnaround Management Association, up to a term as its global chair, and writes, teaches and has long mentored younger people in the field. David told The Globe and Mail in August 2020 that the stretch from September to March would say a lot, with significant distress expected in the economy. David has also put money into turning around an industrial manufacturer in Southwest Ontario.

For David, the appeal is the work itself. If the job were simply about doing a favourite thing, David has said, the days would go to fishing. Chambers Canada ranks David nationally in restructuring and insolvency, and its review points to responsiveness and real strength in planning and carrying out banking and financial restructurings.