Our first meeting

You have either found us through our website or from one of our partners and are probably wondering what is involved in a restructure? If we have chatted with you prior to a meeting, we will have asked a few questions to understand your business and what you issues your business is facing. These questions helps us to make the first meeting as productive as practical. Our first meeting generally takes a few hours.

We will discuss the initial concerns that you have and have a look at your business. We try and have this meeting at your premises to gauge what is going on with your business and how we can help. We let you explain how the business operates, the business’ history and your future goals are.

After our preliminary chat, we will look at the financial statements of the business. This generally takes 30 to 45 minutes as our team have accounting training or are accountants. There process for looking over the statements is a methodical and data collecting process. We will use this time to get a grasp of the financial position in its entirety. If you have bookkeeping software, we will generally have a look into it.

We then look through your creditor listing and any terms of trade or guarantees you have provided to a third party. We will also look through the business’ debt position. Looking through your debtors we will examine what is assets are recoverable and what is unlikely to be paid.

From here we will try and understand your personal financial position and work through what the total position looks like, understanding your trading and asset holding vehicles. We will then compile these into a risk analysis.

Once we understand the basics of the business and the issue we will work through some basic scenarios and try to put forward our preliminary thoughts. For some business owners this can be a confronting part of the meeting as sometimes our recommendations will be to shut the doors and cut your losses. Unfortunately, as time is rarely our friend we do not have the luxury of sugar coating solutions, and will bring the solutions to you in the most candid way possible.

We will run through our initial thoughts and have a question and answer session at this time, including running through the process we recommend, and what our estimate of costs will be. As normally we will be commencing quickly after this meeting we will have a preliminary engagement by the end of the meeting and schedule a follow up meeting within three days.

Before the second meeting

Providing you’re happy to proceed we then work towards the first milestone which will be the recommendation or recommendations and preparing the preliminary documents to assist the restructure take place.

We will usually commence discussions with your existing professionals or if you need recommendations we will make the necessary introductions to our strategic partners. Our team will be in contact with you through this period to clarify any issues that have arisen or to gather further information.

During this time we generally work late and are happy to take calls as late or early as necessary.

The second meeting

We try and have a complete snapshot at the second meeting and will work through our proposed strategy or any concerns that have arisen in the analysis process. This meeting is usually at our office and will involve a whiteboard session explaining the steps forward.

We will usually have a batch of documents to run through at this meeting to move the restructure forward, we run through these documents and explain any element of these.

Again we encourage questions during these meetings.

At the end of this meeting we will have a hard deadline for the restructure and a plan for our it will run through.

Post second meeting

Following the second meeting we adhere strongly to the timelines, this is where we run the process strongly and will be direct in dealing with you. Depending upon the necessary milestones this may include engaging external professionals, communicating with creditors or engaging insolvency professionals.

Our role is to coordinate traffic as it were and we will be usually embedded into your business on a regular basis during the restructure process. We will work closely with you and undertake whatever roles are necessary during the process to ensure that the restructure is on track.

If the business is insolvent?

One option is that the business may be shut down, this process will involve us interacting with the insolvency professionals on your behalf and attempting to finalise any aspects of your business. We can be as hands on as you need, including assisting with appointment and disclosure documents, dealing with staff or suppliers or just being a resource to talk to.

During the insolvency process we will be your advocate, giving you plain English explanations of the process at hand or assisting your in communicating with the practitioner.

We are usually meeting with you at least once or twice a week during this process.

If the business is trading on?

Our involvement will be to assist in the negotiation processes and to ensure that you are able to bring the business back to solid footing. During this time we will work with your engaged professionals to bring accounts up to date, to negotiate with your creditors and to communicate with suppliers and stakeholders.

We against work closely with you to bring the business back to a strong financial footing. Again bringing our experience to your business and giving you a candid second opinion.

We are usually meeting with you at least once a week during this process.

Restructure

As the restructure is occurring we generally spend a full few days at your premises in order to assist in the transition, we are here to assist you explain things to the staff or to work with you to bring the reporting and recording up to date. We will assist in obtaining new agreements or communicating the change to your shareholders.

The restructure process is generally a few days in duration and the lead up work will result in a seamless transition. Where there are new agreements being entered into these are arranged prior to the formal finalisation of the restructure.

Post restructure

Congratulations, we are at the end of the restructure process and you are working with a stable business. There is usually a period of where things may be a bit disjointed as you are trying to deal with the old and new structure, but if the restructure has gone well, you are on your way to a successful and functioning business!