Approach
Every company lives the same seven chapters.
We work in three of them.
01
We read the structure before the story.
Most advisers start with the business and arrive at the balance sheet last. We start with the order of claims, the covenants and the cash, and only then ask whether the story is good. A good story behind a bad structure is still a company in trouble.
02
We work at the bends.
Most of our work is in chapters four and five, where a company’s price and its value drift furthest apart. It is unfashionable work. It is also where a steady hand is paid for.
03
We stay.
A plan is not a deliverable; it is the first week of a long year. We remain with management and lenders through the restructuring and into recovery, until the structure has caught up with the business.
04
We write it down.
Every engagement begins as a memo and ends as a case. We publish the ones we can. If our reasoning cannot survive being read, it should not survive being paid for.
Where we sit
Chapters three to five. We enter on structure and leave when the structure has caught up with the business.
What we are not
Not a report that stays on the shelf. Not an interim manager for hire by the hour. Not an adviser who needs the story to be good before the structure is.