Haywood A. Barnes
Unplugged
continued on page 28
Haywood A. Barnes is a partner in the Charlotte, North Carolina, office of Poyner Spruill LLP,
and a member of the TMA Carolinas
Chapter. His practice focuses on
representing banks, commercial
finance companies, and factors in a
wide variety of commercial lending
and factoring transactions, as well as in
the area of creditors’ rights, workouts,
loan restructurings, and bankruptcy.
Q Are you from the Carolinas originally?
BARNES I am. I’m from the eastern
part of North Carolina, from a town
called Wilson. It’s about an hour east of
Raleigh. Down East is what they call
that part of the state. Most of my family
members are actually tobacco farmers
from way, way back. I’m part of the first
generation to fully make the jump from
doing that kind of work.
Q When you went to law school, did you have a grand plan to get into
turnaround and restructuring work?
How did that come about?
BARNES No, I didn’t. My first job as
a lawyer in 1994 was with a smaller but
really high-quality firm in Greensboro,
North Carolina. That firm, Carruthers &
Roth, had developed an outstanding
commercial lending and creditors’ side
insolvency and bankruptcy practice.
Because of my banking and finance
background—I was a commercial
lending analyst with a bank for a
couple of years after graduating from
college with a finance degree and got
