Topics › Making the organization work
Restructuring and turnaround
The restructuring plan is ambitious, and every measure depends on people who are equipped and committed: managers and employees with the skills and the mandate to deliver, and the works council, lenders and shareholders behind the plan. Once agreed, the plan has to be run as a disciplined program: progress tracked against clear milestones, open items followed up, and deviations escalated and corrected early, before they put the target at risk.
What is at stake
In a restructuring, time is the scarcest resource. Every week of negotiation consumes liquidity, and every concession made under pressure shapes the company that remains. If the sequence is wrong, the parties block one another: lenders wait for shareholders, shareholders for the works council, and the works council for a credible plan.
What typically goes wrong
- The plan is built on the numbers, and the agreement it needs is treated as a formality.
- Stakeholders are approached one at a time, without a view of how their positions depend on each other.
- Management negotiates while also running the business, and both suffer.
- Concessions are made early to buy calm and are missing later, when they are needed.
- Communication promises more certainty than the negotiations can deliver, and trust is lost.
What changes for you
- A sequence of negotiations that follows your liquidity, not each party’s calendar.
- Negotiations with the works council, lenders and shareholders that support rather than undermine one another.
- A management team that can keep running the business while the negotiations are under way.
How we approach it
We map who has to agree to what, in which order, and what each party needs in order to say yes. We help management settle its own position first, including what it will not concede, and prepare the critical conversations with works council, lenders and shareholders. We work alongside your legal and financial advisers, and when time is short we join the team at the table.
What we clarify first
- Whose consent does the plan require, and in what order?
- What does each party need in order to agree, and what can it do if it refuses?
- How much time does the liquidity situation really allow?
Tell us what’s at stake
Thirty minutes, no pitch. You describe the situation. We tell you honestly whether we can help, and how.