Our Business Restructuring Team is highly qualified and experienced to provide you with pragmatic, commercial advice
No matter how well you run your business, there’s always a chance of something going wrong.
It is often something completely beyond your control such as a cashflow problem, an unpaid invoice, or a contract that has fallen through.
Individuals are just as vulnerable through sickness, redundancy or plain bad luck that can suddenly make your life very difficult.
You can’t take back what’s happened, but you can choose what you do next, and there may be more options than you think.
Our Business Restructuring Team is highly qualified and experienced to provide you with pragmatic, commercial advice on improving or protecting your business, whether you are looking for company restructuring or business recovery services to build resilience or to meet adverse challenges.
Our team covers the whole of the UK, with offices in Bath, Bristol, Cheltenham, Exeter, Truro, Torquay, Plymouth and Worcester.
The quicker you act, the greater the chance of addressing the challenges faced by your business. We are happy to meet you for a free, no obligation, discussion to see how we can help you to do that.
Resilience is the first line of defence against any distress, yet it often receives very little focused attention. We work with clients on business improvement and building resilience first, minimising the risk of unwanted challenges.
The perfect balance sheet boasts assets that perform efficiently over expected life spans, stocks that sell for expected margin, debtors that pay on time and a profit and loss reserve that increases at the optimum rate feasible within the limits of the underlying business. We advise on closing the gap between current and optimum performance, and we build solvency advantage into balance sheets by setting perfection as a target.
There are times when growth support and business improvement need greater change. Whether a reshape to face the demands of a changing market, a divesting or closing of loss-making divisions, or a sale of noncore parts of the business, we understand the end before then advising and supporting on the means. We help plan the steps needed to turn businesses around and return them to their growth paths.
Our business restructuring services start with forecasting, monitoring, option reviews and non-procedural assignments. Whilst we recognise the positive outcomes that procedural assignments can deliver and have the qualified team to deliver administrations and voluntary arrangements, these are not the predetermined solutions.
We advocate continuous communication. A relationship where early reaction is not required, because looming challenges are already known, and strategies are well underway.
Sometimes businesses get into financial difficulties where, even though there is a visible solution, there is not enough cash to fund the transition. The consequence is that businesses that might have had a future simply fail and close.
The greater the financial distress, the more difficult it is to fund solutions. Early preparation and planning is crucial. But if a business has got a viable and profitable core, it may be possible to restructure its borrowings or raise new finance.
We assist with the preparation of detailed plans to reorganise, recover and rebuild business, exploring options and strategy. We can prepare financial projections and help document detailed business plans for lenders.
Using Capitalise, our interactive, proven platform that focuses the search on securing the right kind of funding for you and your business, we can present your plans to over 100 different finance providers.
We are also well-connected with Private Equity, Venture Capital and Institutional Investors and in large and complex cases, we will advise on your options for raising equity investment.
When a business struggles or fails, there are often others who can step in to turn it around, save jobs, protect the goodwill and build a new business on the foundations of the old. In these situations, clarity of vision, access to buyers and prospects, and speed is critical.
We would quickly assess your plans and prepare and review cash forecasts that represent the outcome of the plan. We would prepare an Information Memorandum that presents the opportunity and work to find a suitable buyer. We can assist with due diligence, if necessary conducting a Vendor Due Diligence, where a report is prepared in advance of any marketing of the business.
We can make confidential approaches to minimise the risk of adverse publicity and we manage the process fully from start to finish.
Alternatively, if you find a business in distress that you are interested in, we can carry out very rapid and focused due diligence, review the content of data rooms, prepare forecasts and assist with raising finance. We can advise on the likely cost of integration, including reorganisation and redundancies, and manage the acquisition process from start to finish.
Every corporate will play the creditor role in the natural course of business, but when looking at the position through your own perspective, your debtors are rarely seen as a list of creditor roles you are currently starring in.
Where payment terms are adhered to and relationships with customers are strong, taking on the role of creditor is not a concern. However, problem customers are a constant threat. We advise on the strategies that can be deployed to minimise the risk of problems arising. Where problems already exist, we advise on the solutions.
We invest in our client relationships to ensure that when a problem customer surfaces, we are well positioned to work with the key personnel to deliver a timely course of action.
In scenarios where customers ‘won’t pay’, our commercial negotiation and mediation skills, together with our partnership with Escalate, yield positive results. We recognise that cash in hand is worth more than ageing debt. Where customers ‘can’t pay’, we harvest the relationship with that customer, using our turnaround and business improvement skills to address their problems. We recognise that a repositioning of your customer’s business is the best prospect of your debt being paid. We work with clients to determine the impact of problem customers on their own trading positions and address similar issues posed by problem suppliers.
In circumstances where your customers have ceased to trade altogether and are entering or have entered a process, we advise on proxy and proof of debt completion and manage your position as creditor until the entity’s dissolution.
There are many reasons to restructure a solvent company or group of companies, from winding down a company once it has reached the end of its useful life, to simplifying a group structure.
We advise on a variety of solvent exit strategies where shareholders are seeking to extract their capital in a tax efficient and structured manner, including members’ voluntary liquidation.
For instance, you may have built up a significant part of your wealth in a business that you own and operate. When you come to retire, you might sell the business and assets to a competitor, to a new entrant to your market, or to your management and staff. In many cases the cash that you receive upon sale is locked into the original trading company or a group holding company. We work closely with our tax colleagues to provide the solvent liquidation which enables shareholders to extract their capital in a tax efficient and orderly manner.
We also review and manage corporate simplification projects. Group structures can become unduly complicated and inefficient, and legacy dormant subsidiaries are often left without purpose. This results in increased costs and increased risk.
We can work with you to identify which companies within the group are surplus to requirements, and then provide recommendations on next steps. We can assist with the more straight-forward striking off of companies, or we can help implement a solvent liquidation process as above, in order to leave you with a more efficient and leaner corporate structure.
Bishop Fleming is partnered with Escalate, a revolutionary and award-winning commercial dispute solution that is transforming how SMEs resolve bad debts, late payments and other types of business disputes. Find out how we can help you here.