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Client has a large equity stake and is a working director in an IT company. This is a growing company but has had cash flow constraints. The client has attempted to help by drawing little or no salary during this stage of the company’s development. He has resorted to using a series of credit cards and unsecured loans. These were proving difficult to service.
UNSECURED LOAN: Client had a large unsecured loan which he was struggling to pay and he was forced simply to pay the interest was making no headway with repaying the capital.
3 CREDIT CARDS: Client had a number of credit cards which he had difficulty in servicing. What had started out as short term credit had ended up as long term very expensive borrowing.
Friendly Society (Financial Services): Following deregulation a Friendly Society acquired a composite bank / insurance company. There was no clear vision and business strategy for the new Group beyond achieving economies cost saving benefits through economies of scale and opportunities for cross selling through an increased customer base. Does that sound familiar?
High Street Bank: A new radical Finance design had been developed with external consultants and nobody in the existing management team was capable of implementing the new structure and delivering business as usual activities.
Subcontract Manufacturer: A long established company which manufactured and maintained critical parts for aircraft diversified into electronic and electro-mechanical subcontracting. Whilst initially successful this new division became a drain on the company's cash and resources. The shareholding Directors could not agree on the best way out of the situation as the company was rapidly becoming insolvent.
Kitchen & Bathroom Retailer: The shareholders of a kitchens and bathrooms retailer were all pulling in different directions. Some shareholders were putting in more effort than others who were being obstructive and who would not sell their shares other than for an unrealistic price.
Engineering Company: Precision engineering company whose sales had dropped from £5 million to £2 million over three years, causing losses of £100,000 per month. It had absentee owners and a weak management team.
Internet Directory Enquiries Service: the business had a high profile and emerged successfully in terms of presence from the dot.bomb times, but had accumulated large losses and a ravaged balance sheet with a negative balance sheet of some 0.9m on a turnover of £2.6m.
IT Recruitment Company: the business had experienced phenomenal success before 2000, but several years of dampened trading cut turnover by half. The market was experiencing an upturn but the company was unable to capitalise on this as it was continually dealing with its overdue creditors.
Frozen Food Manufacturer: the business was losing £250k per annum on sales of £5m. Worse, the company had debts of £1.6m and assets of only £800k.
Sub-Systems Manufacturer, Systems House and a Documentation Company: due to dubious financial accounting practices the main board of a fully listed PLC were thrown out by shareholders and a new board was put in place. The businesses were heavily loss making, were in rapid decline and their core market was suffering very heavy cutbacks.
A Bio-Technology Products Company was struggling to grow – its products were few and its margins poor and it was making losses. Although over 70% of its staff held university qualifications it lacked real leadership and management. Its investors removed the CEO and appointed a new one ...
Deep Sea Cargo Container Terminal at the Far Eastern end of the Trans Siberian Railway. Established in 1995 and managed by an Australian subsidiary of a FTSE100 PLC, the company had made losses since its inception.
High End Kitchen Manufacturing Company in Kent designs, manufactures and installs bespoke kitchen cabinets, worktops and floors to individual customer requirements. Although the quality of the products and the craftsmanship is excellent, a lack of expertise in marketing and financial management has resulted in significant losses which have jeopardised the survival of the business.
Shipping Agency Restructuring in Pakistan acted as liner shipping agents to a number of Shipping Lines, with offices in Karachi , Islamabad , Peshawar , Faisalabad and Sialkot . The company culture was extremely conservative and complacent, resulting in an over-reliance on principals whose business was under attack from younger, more aggressive organisations. This resulted in shrinking revenues and a high level of over-manning in the agency.
Electrical Motor Distributor- the business was frequently short of cash and management information was little more than Sales, and a Gross Margin costing system. There was more than one Company and payments were made depending which Company had money.
Software Document Imaging Company - the start-up software company was a pioneer in its field and had a unique, well-regarded, profitable product. But turning market- interest into volume sales was taking much longer than had been hoped. The company was losing money and cash-flow was a major problem.
Plastic Packaging Manufacturing Group - this UK headquartered group has 4 subsidiaries including one in Germany and one in France, both of which were significantly insolvent and over-indebted. Had either of these failed the whole group was very seriously financially endangered as the parent company had issued various sizeable guarantees on behalf of these subsidiaries.