Restructuring advisory

Helping you find the best restructuring solutions in
challenging times

When you start to experience financial difficulties, acting swiftly and engaging restructuring advisory experts early can maximise your chances of a solvent recovery.

Our specialist team of business, HR and insolvency consultants will work with you and your advisers, stakeholders and funders to quickly assess your situation. We can identify the immediate challenges to your business and present and recommend the best possible solutions.

Our restructuring services include

Cash flow reviews
Independent business reviews
Turnaround advice
Pre-lending due diligence for banks
Options and contingency planning
Exit planning

Our restructuring advisory team can help you to

Develop effective plans for recovery, prioritising your resources and identifying your key workstreams and milestones to keep them on track.
Manage any redundancy processes or changes in employment terms and conditions.
Work out your cash requirements using financial modelling and improve your cash flow management processes.
Review your business development processes to identify any gaps (such as improvements to your value proposition) that could help with your recovery.
Secure alternative sources of funding.
Realise value and find new ownership for your business at speed.
Formally review options for value realisation and report on these.
Help make sure you are harnessing the full power of your employees as well as properly considering your obligations.
Independent valuations of your entire business, or individual components within a wider group.

Expert help buying or selling a distressed business

Mergers and acquisitions (M&A) present financial, legal and operational challenges and often require a rapid response. Working closely with our corporate finance team, we can assist you with buying or selling a distressed business.

Our services include:

Due diligence
Valuations
Financial modelling
Raising finance and growth capital
Management buy-outs and buy-ins

If solvent solutions are not possible, our business recovery and insolvency team can help you navigate your responsibilities and options to create the best outcome. Contact us to discover more about our restructuring advisory services.

Case studies

Moore Kingston Smith rescues consumer PR agency on brink of ruin

A consumer PR agency approached us, in considerable distress, for advice on the future of their business and whether they should apply for a CBILS loan. The managing partners feared their only viable option was to close down.

However, we managed to create a sustainable business structure to keep the company afloat throughout 2021, without needing the loan after all. Now, the managing partners are confident their agency is fit to face the future.

We started by having an in-depth conversation with the managing partners, where they catalogued their predicament. They were incurring significant monthly losses, had lost major clients, their H2 revenue forecast showed income dropping by over 50%, they had deferred paying VAT, implemented salary cuts and furloughed staff. Yet still their cash was due to run out in six months’ time.

Next, we went through the agency’s cash flow, balance sheet, profit and loss, budget and trading forecast, and identified missed opportunities and substantial flaws in their management information. We uncovered a major fundamental error in their cash flow modelling, which is what had made the managing partners believe that insolvency was looming.

Conversely, our cash flow modelling demonstrated that they did in fact have the reserves to execute a successful strategy. We also reviewed their overhead base, pinpointed appropriate cost reductions and our HR consultancy arm subsequently handled their staffing restructuring needs.

The agency said: “Thank you to the team at Moore Kingston Smith. We feel assured that the business is set up for the foreseeable, and the decisions we are making are based on sound reasoning.”

Turnaround advisory and accelerated M&A

Moore Kingston Smith supported a family owned food manufacturer with severe liquidity problems and losses. The team stabilised liquidity following a comprehensive situation analysis, identifying opportunities to generate cash quickly from inventory and restructured the staff base. The team negotiated with funders for a grace period and then identified strategic assets and buyers before ultimately selling the business to one of these strategic buyers realising shareholder value and refinancing the debt.

Strategy and turnaround advisory

The Moore Kingston Smith team advised a struggling marketing services business that had become loss making following the termination of major client contracts resulting in a return to profitability within five months. Following a detailed options review and modelling exercise the team guided the business through a process of reducing headcount to eliminate excess capacity, a premises renegotiation with their landlord and a comprehensive cost cutting exercise based upon a zero based budgeting approach.

Accelerated M&A and working capital review

Moore Kingston Smith supported a medium sized manufacturing business with severe losses and cash flow issues. The team performed a comprehensive situation analysis, prepared an integrated financial model and identified opportunities to renegotiate supplier terms to provide financial headroom before ultimately arranging for a sale to a key supplier realising shareholder value and safeguarding the business.

Turnaround and fundraising advisory

Moore Kingston Smith supported a wholesaling business which had seen their revenues cease as a result of lockdown obtain a £1.5 million CBILS loan from their bank to provide liquidity during the Coronavirus crisis. The team performed a review of the options available to the business, including government support, reviewed and advised them on their business plans and forecasts and supported them through the loan application process.