FC is not an insolvency practitioner – we do not act as administrators or liquidators. Accordingly, we have no agenda to gain this type of work and we are able to bring an independent and truly objective approach to helping businesses that are struggling or in danger of becoming insolvent.

In our experience, businesses that are considered by their management or owners as having a “cash flow problem” often have a profitability problem instead. Typically, the lack of cash is just the symptom and inevitable result of failing to generate decent profitability over a sustained period. FC’s principals and consultants have many years’ experience in industry, including in leading national and international businesses and venture capital-backed companies. They have a proven track record of restructuring acquired and underperforming businesses and business units and returning them to profitability. Because we have this real world experience, we are not just consultants who prepare a report and then disappear. We can work with our client to develop a turnaround or rescue plan and then we can assist the client to implement it successfully. If need be, we will provide or source interim management to fill any gaps in the client’s team.

It will often be the case that a turnaround plan we develop with a client requires more funding to implement it than the client has available. In these cases we will seek to refinance the business or raise additional finance using the range of sources we have available to us. We have excellent knowledge of the market for rescue and turnaround capital, including:

• Non-mainstream debt solutions, including “stretched lending”
• Secondary lending
• Private investor capital
• Bridging finance

In the event that a business is in danger of insolvency, the lending bank or other finance provider may be seeking to manage the situation to optimise its own position, but this may not be in the borrower’s best interests. It will often be the case that the bank will insist on the appointment of advisers who nominally act for both the bank and the company, but in reality the adviser usually has a long history of doing business with the bank, often acting as administrator or liquidator, and potentially will benefit from a lucrative appointment if the business does fail. We have detailed knowledge and vast experience of helping clients who find themselves in this very dangerous situation.