Timely, objective, innovative and experienced financial advisory can make the difference between project success and project failure; between profit and loss, or between sustainability and demise.
Achieving optimum financial performance calls for the balancing of various relationships between a variety of performance drivers, which sometimes requires businesses to make hard decisions.
Even small mistakes can sometimes be very costly; and they are best avoided. At other times, it is vital to just be assured that your ship is not headed for an iceberg.
Our clients trust our intentions, independence, transparency and the integrity with which we work with them to obtain well blended and creative financial solutions, matched to their requirements in different circumstances.
We are not an audit firm.
We focus on financial strategy, specifically evaluating the various financial circumstances, requirements, decisions and opportunities that our clients may be faced with, and how these can most optimally be translated to value input for competitive performance.
Our work in financial advisory is structured around the following areas:
Through our corporate finance advisory work, we aim to deliver impact in four key areas:
- Growth of shareholder value
- Maximization of return on investment
- Management of financial risks
- Sustainability of our clients’ enterprises
Correspondingly, we work with clients in the following areas:
- Development of business financial plans
- Review of capital structure
- Evaluation of capital investment decisions
- Development of financial policy for the optimization of cash, inventory, and net asset value
We work with clients to manage different kinds of financial risk, to determine and maintain optimum levels of investment, debt, equity, as well as a level of working capital that yields optimum operating profit.
By examining the outcomes of different decisions before they are actually made, or before capital and other resources are put to work, a business not only avoids costly mistakes, it also, and in a very big way improves the certainty with which it achieves its desired goals.
This is what we work with clients to achieve through our financial modeling work.
We work with clients to develop different models to support operations and management decision-making in various areas including the following:
- Business development modelling
- Scenario-analysis
- Sensitivity analysis of various performance factors impacting on the business
- Production modelling
Numbers don’t lie and our clients know they can rely on us to give them the right numbers.
For SMEs especially, finding suitable and convenient financing solutions for investment, growth or reorganization can be difficult. Complexities around ownership, governance, financial reporting, and valuation of assets, project rationale and the transfer of various risks, combine to make accessibility of project finance a lot more difficult than it should.
Through our commercial lending advisory work we develop tailored financing solutions for our clients, through which they are able expand their businesses, increase their capital investment, and secure long-term deals and relationships.
Specifically, we work with clients in the following areas as they seek financing solutions to thier growth and business development requirements.
- Evaluation of project feasibility
- Development of balance sheet restructuring options
- Optimisation of debt capacity
- Preparation of business plan cash flow projections
- Projection of expected rates of return
- Negotiation of credit with suitable lenders and financing partners
- Project management
We have developed excellent relationships with selected banks and other financiers through which we are able to obtain a wide range of financing choices to address different business requirements.
As independent transaction advisors free of conflict of interest our Transactional advisory work builds on our wide experience with a variety of industries and business sectors to protect deal value and to guarantee that the transaction is concluded with due prudence . Given the variety of approaches to determination of the purchase or sale price of a business, we work with clients to reduce transactional risk and to obtain optimum transactional value.
Our Transactional Advisory work sharply focuses on the core transaction area from which deal value is lost or disputed:
- Corporate due diligence
- Completion accounts
- commercial due diligence
Whether
in the case of a merger, acquisition, management buyout, sale of a non-core
operation, off-shore operation, or other asset disposal, we provide board-level
advisory in transaction planning, due diligence, negotiation and post-deal
integration to ensure that each transaction’s business objectives are achieved.
Because we are aware of the impact of various risks on corporate performance, we work with clients in our risk assurance function to identify risks they may be facing, assess their potential impact on the business, and prioritize them to form a suitable framework within which they can be most efficiently managed.
Our risk assurance methodologies are based on international risk management standards, through which we help our clients to develop process controls, risk mitigating strategies and business continuity plans.
We provide independent, objective and professional assurance, free of conflict of interest on which our clients can rely to make business decisions.
We work with management teams, audit committees and external auditors, to establish corporate governance procedures and to create internal controls that effectively support business goals.
Our typical risk assurance assignment will entail key risk assessment steps:
- determination of risk factors across financial, operational, technological, information and other business risk areas
- profiling of risks ensuing from the identified risk areas
- identification of the existing controls used to respond to identified risks
- review of the adequacy of existing risk management and control initiatives
- detailed testing of the risk management and control initiatives
- comprehensive audit of the extent to which regulatory, policy, and procedural requirements are complied with
- documentation and reporting of findings and recommendations
Risk assurance requirements are nonetheless diverse
and client-specific and we tailor each assignment to meet specific client
requirements.
Even where there are no regulatory requirements directing corporate governance, poor or weak governance can compromise integrity and sacrifice the sustainability of a company. Investors especially, and other stakeholders want to know that their interests are backed up by governance best practices that guarantee sustainability.
Advice is best given – and taken – before it is needed.
Even then, the signs of a failing business manifest long before the business actually fails:
- Stunted growth
- Lack of product development
- Shrinking market share
- Inability to meet regular financial obligations
- Loss of key employees to competition
- Loss of formerly loyal clients to competition
- Decreasing or suspended capital investment
- Reducing profits; and
- Disempowering publicity among other indicators do not portend a flourishing enterprise.
Our wok in recovery work aims to provide appropriate support to underperforming businesses and those facing various difficulties threatening their survival, to restore shareholder value, secure jobs, protect other stakeholder interests and put these businesses back on track.
The earlier remedial measures are sought, the wider the choice of interventions.
We provide business recovery advisory in THREE areas:
Businesses faced with declining performance most of the time have the genesis of their problems in two areas: strategy and governance.
Absence of a robust strategic planning process, inappropriate strategic choices, failure to take the necessary, tough, strategic decisions, inadequate resourcing of the strategy or a lukewarm commitment to delivering on the strategy on one hand lead to a slow, steady (and sometimes faster than imagined) decline to demise.
On the other hand, conflict of interest at board or senior management levels, unethical practices, poor financial reporting, weak systems of control, ineffective management and various other factors relating governance and corporate decision-making have similar consequences, and could in themselves be the underlying reasons why the business is unable to implement suitable strategic interventions, either to spur growth, or to stem its decline.
Our work in business turnaround and rescue advisory provides a suitable platform for the early detection and remedy of adverse circumstances that could be impacting on the business. This is one of the earliest interventions in stemming the downward spiral and typically entails the following:
- Review of the business strategy and performance management model
- Restructuring of senior management and redefinition of role performance requirements
- Development of a new, turnaround management team
- Setting of clear, time-bound, performance objectives
- Support for the strategy implementation process
Most businesses showing early signs of distress are able to regain their health if appropriate intervention is taken at the right time. Our mature approach to the process, based on our wide experience across different types of businesses and organizations yields the desired results, and as much as possible, within safe, win-win situations.
Sometimes a business in distress will need is a refinancing solution. Strategy errors, slow or untimely decision-making and unforeseen developments in the external environment of a business may lead to a decline in the business’ ability to exploit existing opportunities, optimize operating profit and to deliver an acceptable return to shareholders.
In more severe situations a business may have become unable to service its existing debt, and may be getting into increasing pressure from its creditors. The firm’s net value may be declining and its ability to finance its own working capital impaired. It is still not too late; though the options for remedial measures may be fewer, more urgent, and more severe.
Through our debt and financial restructuring advisory work, we provide clients expert turnaround solutions based on available financial options, including the following.
- Intermediation with lenders and other creditors for extended payment terms
- Re-pricing of debt
- Liquidation of unutilised assets
- Review of operating costs and overheads
- Factoring of trade receivables
- Release of cash held in working capital
- Re-pricing of product offering to drive volumes, increase profitability or generate cash
- Capitalization of debt
We work with direct clients, as well as provide debt and financial restructuring as a service through selected banks and other lending institutions with corporate loan exposure to secure invested debt funds and avert the eroding of shareholder value. Our debt and financial restructuring work aims to secure funding extended by commercial banks and other lending institutions in three areas:
- Intermediation between the bank, or other lender and a borrower showing signs of distress to obtain mutually acceptable strategies for the repayment of outstanding debt;
- Control and monitoring of the corporate borrower’s performance to ensure adherence to mutually agreed strategies
- Structuring of distressed debt and turnaround solutions to secure the bank’s interests and to help distressed borrowers most efficiently retire their debts
Shareholders or regulators of a business that may not have taken up appropriate remedial measures, or failed to seek them in good time, may opt to render the business to a receiver, to whom they give custodial responsibility for their interests in the business.
Receivership may be the most extreme of business recovery initiatives, but our desire is still, at best, to restore the failing business back to health. This may be achieved after the realization of some of the company’s assets to discharge existing debt, but not until we have determined that this is the best option for all parties.
Our aim in Receivership is to obtain amicable transfer of assets and liabilities, and to see that decisions made for and about the companies we take into receivership obtain the greatest possible, and mutually acceptable, value for all the concerned parties.
Businesses faced with declining performance most of the time have the genesis of their problems in two areas: strategy and governance.
Absence of a robust strategic planning process, inappropriate strategic choices, failure to take the necessary, tough, strategic decisions, inadequate resourcing of the strategy or a lukewarm commitment to delivering on the strategy on one hand lead to a slow, steady (and sometimes faster than imagined) decline to demise.
On the other hand, conflict of interest at board or senior management levels, unethical practices, poor financial reporting, weak systems of control, ineffective management and various other factors relating governance and corporate decision-making have similar consequences, and could in themselves be the underlying reasons why the business is unable to implement suitable strategic interventions, either to spur growth, or to stem its decline.
Our work in business turnaround and rescue advisory provides a suitable platform for the early detection and remedy of adverse circumstances that could be impacting on the business. This is one of the earliest interventions in stemming the downward spiral and typically entails the following:
- Review of the business strategy and performance management model
- Restructuring of senior management and redefinition of role performance requirements
- Development of a new, turnaround management team
- Setting of clear, time-bound, performance objectives
- Support for the strategy implementation process
Most businesses showing early signs of distress are able to regain their health if appropriate intervention is taken at the right time. Our mature approach to the process, based on our wide experience across different types of businesses and organizations yields the desired results, and as much as possible, within safe, win-win situations.
For SMEs especially, finding suitable and convenient financing solutions for investment, growth or reorganization can be difficult. Complexities around ownership, governance, financial reporting, and valuation of assets, project rationale and the transfer of various risks, combine to make accessibility of project finance a lot more difficult than it should.
In our Credit advisory work we develop tailored financing solutions for our clients, through which they are able expand their businesses, increase their capital investment, and secure long-term deals and relationships.
We specifically work with clients in the following areas as they seek financing solutions to their growth and business development requirements.
- Evaluation of project feasibility
- Development of balance sheet restructuring options
- Optimisation of debt capacity
- Preparation of business plan cash flow projections
- Projection of expected rates of return
- Negotiation of credit with suitable lenders and financing partners
- Project management
We have developed excellent relationships with selected banks and other financiers through which we are able to obtain a wide range of financing choices to address different business requirements.
The signs of a failing business manifest long before the business actually fails:
- Stunted growth
- Lack of product development
- Shrinking market share
- Inability to meet regular financial obligations
- Loss of key employees to competition
- Loss of formerly loyal clients to competition
- Decreasing or suspended capital investment
- Reducing profits; and
- Disempowering publicity
These indicators, among others, do not portend a flourishing enterprise.
We provide business recovery advisory in THREE areas:
Our wok in recovery work aims to provide appropriate support to underperforming businesses and those facing various difficulties threatening their survival, to restore shareholder value, secure jobs, protect other stakeholder interests and put these businesses back on track.
The earlier remedial measures are sought, the wider the choice of interventions.
Advice is best given - and taken - before it is needed.
Businesses faced with declining performance most of the time have the genesis of their problems in two areas: strategy and governance.
Absence of a robust strategic planning process, inappropriate strategic choices, failure to take the necessary, tough, strategic decisions, inadequate resourcing of the strategy or a lukewarm commitment to delivering on the strategy on one hand lead to a slow, steady (and sometimes faster than imagined) decline to demise.
On the other hand, conflict of interest at board or senior management levels, unethical practices, poor financial reporting, weak systems of control, ineffective management and various other factors relating governance and corporate decision-making have similar consequences, and could in themselves be the underlying reasons why the business is unable to implement suitable strategic interventions, either to spur growth, or to stem its decline.
Our work in business turnaround and rescue advisory provides a suitable platform for the early detection and remedy of adverse circumstances that could be impacting on the business. This is one of the earliest interventions in stemming the downward spiral and typically entails the following:
- Review of the business strategy and performance management model
- Restructuring of senior management and redefinition of role performance requirements
- Development of a new, turnaround management team
- Setting of clear, time-bound, performance objectives
- Support for the strategy implementation process
Most businesses showing early signs of distress are able to regain their health if appropriate intervention is taken at the right time. Our mature approach to the process, based on our wide experience across different types of businesses and organizations yields the desired results, and as much as possible, within safe, win-win situations.
By examining the outcomes of different decisions before they are actually made, or before capital and other resources are put to work, a business not only avoids costly mistakes, it also, and in a very big way improves the certainty with which it achieves its desired goals.
This is what we work with clients to achieve through our financial modeling work.
We work with clients to develop different models to support operations and management decision-making in various areas including the following:
- Business development modelling
- Scenario-analysis
- Sensitivity analysis of various performance factors impacting on the business
- Production modelling
Numbers don’t lie and our clients know they can rely on us to give them the right numbers.
Businesses faced with declining performance most of the time have the genesis of their problems in two areas: strategy and governance.
Absence of a robust strategic planning process, inappropriate strategic choices, failure to take the necessary, tough, strategic decisions, inadequate resourcing of the strategy or a lukewarm commitment to delivering on the strategy on one hand lead to a slow, steady (and sometimes faster than imagined) decline to demise.
On the other hand, conflict of interest at board or senior management levels, unethical practices, poor financial reporting, weak systems of control, ineffective management and various other factors relating governance and corporate decision-making have similar consequences, and could in themselves be the underlying reasons why the business is unable to implement suitable strategic interventions, either to spur growth, or to stem its decline.
Our work in business turnaround and rescue advisory provides a suitable platform for the early detection and remedy of adverse circumstances that could be impacting on the business. This is one of the earliest interventions in stemming the downward spiral and typically entails the following:
- Review of the business strategy and performance management model
- Restructuring of senior management and redefinition of role performance requirements
- Development of a new, turnaround management team
- Setting of clear, time-bound, performance objectives
- Support for the strategy implementation process
Most businesses showing early signs of distress are able to regain their health if appropriate intervention is taken at the right time. Our mature approach to the process, based on our wide experience across different types of businesses and organizations yields the desired results, and as much as possible, within safe, win-win situations.
By examining the outcomes of different decisions before they are actually made, or before capital and other resources are put to work, a business not only avoids costly mistakes, it also, and in a very big way improves the certainty with which it achieves its desired goals.
This is what we work with clients to achieve through our financial modeling work.
We work with clients to develop different models to support operations and management decision-making in various areas including the following:
- Business development modelling
- Scenario-analysis
- Sensitivity analysis of various performance factors impacting on the business
- Production modelling
Numbers don’t lie and our clients know they can rely on us to give them the right numbers.
Businesses faced with declining performance most of the time have the genesis of their problems in two areas: strategy and governance.
Absence of a robust strategic planning process, inappropriate strategic choices, failure to take the necessary, tough, strategic decisions, inadequate resourcing of the strategy or a lukewarm commitment to delivering on the strategy on one hand lead to a slow, steady (and sometimes faster than imagined) decline to demise.
On the other hand, conflict of interest at board or senior management levels, unethical practices, poor financial reporting, weak systems of control, ineffective management and various other factors relating governance and corporate decision-making have similar consequences, and could in themselves be the underlying reasons why the business is unable to implement suitable strategic interventions, either to spur growth, or to stem its decline.
Our work in business turnaround and rescue advisory provides a suitable platform for the early detection and remedy of adverse circumstances that could be impacting on the business. This is one of the earliest interventions in stemming the downward spiral and typically entails the following:
- Review of the business strategy and performance management model
- Restructuring of senior management and redefinition of role performance requirements
- Development of a new, turnaround management team
- Setting of clear, time-bound, performance objectives
- Support for the strategy implementation process
Most businesses showing early signs of distress are able to regain their health if appropriate intervention is taken at the right time. Our mature approach to the process, based on our wide experience across different types of businesses and organizations yields the desired results, and as much as possible, within safe, win-win situations.
Sometimes a business in distress will need is a refinancing solution. Strategy errors, slow or untimely decision-making and unforeseen developments in the external environment of a business may lead to a decline in the business’ ability to exploit existing opportunities, optimize operating profit and to deliver an acceptable return to shareholders. In more severe situations a business may have become unable to service its existing debt, and may be getting into increasing pressure from its creditors. The firm’s net value may be declining and its ability to finance its own working capital impaired. It is still not too late; though the options for remedial measures may be fewer, more urgent, and more severe.
Through our debt and financial restructuring advisory work, we provide clients expert turnaround solutions based on available financial options, including the following.
- Intermediation with lenders and other creditors for extended payment terms
- Re-pricing of debt
- Liquidation of unutilised assets
- Review of operating costs and overheads
- Factoring of trade receivables
- Release of cash held in working capital
- Re-pricing of product to drive volumes, increase profitability or generate cash
- Capitalization of debt
We work with direct clients, as well as provide debt and financial restructuring as a service through selected banks and other lending institutions with corporate loan exposure to secure invested debt funds and avert the eroding of shareholder value. Our debt and financial restructuring work aims to secure funding extended by commercial banks and other lending institutions in three areas:
- Intermediation between the bank, or other lender and a borrower showing signs of distress to obtain mutually acceptable strategies for the repayment of outstanding debt;
- Control and monitoring of the corporate borrower’s performance to ensure adherence to mutually agreed strategies
- Structuring of distressed debt and turnaround solutions to secure the bank’s interests and to help distressed borrowers most efficiently retire their debts
Shareholders or regulators of a business that may not have taken up appropriate remedial measures, or failed to seek them in good time, may opt to render the business to a receiver, to whom they give custodial responsibility for their interests in the business.
Receivership may be the most extreme of business recovery initiatives, but our desire is still, at best, to restore the failing business back to health.
This may be achieved after the realization of some of the company’s assets to discharge existing debt, but not until we have determined that this is the best option for all parties. Our aim in Receivership is to obtain amicable transfer of assets and liabilities, and to see that decisions made for and about the companies we take into receivership obtain the greatest possible, and mutually acceptable, value for all the concerned parties.
Start with the customer – find out what they want and give it to them.
Given the vastness of financial management requirements in business - ranging from equity financing, short and long-term credit; management of working capital; to various other structured financing solutions, our work in financial advisory aims at optimising financial returns and creating additional value to clients and investors.
Different advisory engagements will, therefore, take different approaches. The age, size, complexity and industry of the client also significantly impact on viable approaches to the assignment, as to the legal and regulatory requirements that the client is expected to comply with in each case.
The approach of each assignment is, therefore, best considered within the context of the client's prevailing needs and circumstances.
Finance in a business context is a lot more than accounting. Good accounting is important, but it is historical. Finance is futuristic.
Approaching the business with a sound financial operating model reduces your exposure, and sets a basis for your financial performance.
A good budget model, regular performance monitoring and prompt action to remedy divergence from the planned course keeps the business' financial performance objectives in check.
The first step will always, therefore, be the setting of clear, rationalised financial performance indicators, followed by the taking of necessary actions to achieve and maintain them.
