Interim management: Chief Restructuring Officer (CRO)

What EY restructuring and turnaround leadership services can do for you

Restructuring or turning around a business is often a complex, high stress situation. We work with you to create alignment and understanding to obtain support for the restructuring from internal and external stakeholders. We have many years of experience supporting your teams to deliver the restructuring or providing leadership and executive support, including interim management services such as acting as chief restructuring officer (CRO) or chief restructuring advisor (CRA) in order to help lead the restructuring or turnaround.

There are three critical elements to leading a successful restructuring or turnaround:

• Pace
• Confidence
• Execution

Sharing our experience, tools and leadership, we work with you to quickly identify solutions and create understanding and alignment to obtain support for the restructuring from internal and external stakeholders. We can then either support your teams to deliver the restructuring or work with you as an interim manager for example as a Chief Restructuring Officer.

Common challenges

• Operational and financial underperformance and value erosion
• Loss of focus
• Loss of talent
• Weakened credibility with stakeholders
• Liquidity shortfalls
• Lack of clarity around performance and trust in the numbers (profit and cash)
• Overstretched management
• Lack of appropriate experience and skill to tackle issues
• Failure to hit milestones

How we can help you

• Board support and leadership: From acting as financial advisor to hands-on support such as taking board-level appointments (e.g., chief restructuring officer). We provide guidance and a clarity of thinking drawn from our insights and experience of leading restructurings for over 40 years.
• Stabilize: Creating the breathing space and platform to address the challenges through rapid intervention, with a focus on pace and impact to create the necessary grip and control, while securing common internal and external stakeholder understanding and buy-in.
• Transform: Creating and maintaining momentum — from the initial intervention and turnaround initiatives brought by the restructuring approach, to building and executing a clear medium- to longer-term strategy and value creation plan, through to ultimate exit and value realization.
• Operational Restructuring and Turnaround: We are a team that provides leadership in times of crisis. We bring depth and experience to build consensus amongst stakeholders, understand reasons for stress and its impact on enterprise value, and help take immediate action to preserve and enhance enterprise value in terms of liquidity management, realignment of cost structures and capex programs and identification and disposal of non-core assets.

Senior members of our team take up the role of Chief Restructuring Officer to lead the entire distress resolution process outside of a formal bankruptcy process. We frequently act as senior interim business leaders (CFO/CEO/COO) to drive change hands on. Our teams are based on-site full time and work with management to handle difficult conversations with employees, suppliers, customers and regulators. Timeliness is essential in a rapidly declining stressed business and every member of our team understands this very well.

In situations where a liquidity gap has been addressed by an existing or a new investor or lender, we assist management to rapidly improve business performance through revenue enhancement, efficiency and cost improvement and working capital optimization solutions.  

For a financial stakeholder and large customer heavily dependent on a supplier, we can perform an Independent Business Review (IBR). An IBR is a rapid health check on the business that identifies signs of stress and the ability of a business to meet its financial and operational obligations in the short to medium term. 

Reach out to us if you are a stressed asset fund, private equity investor, lender or a business facing stress, including in your vendor ecosystem. We can assist with the following:

1.  Chief Restructuring Officer or Senior Interim Management services
2.  Crisis management, driven by liquidity challenges and / or debt default
3.  Rapid, high impact improvement in operating business performance
4.  Independent Business Review
5.  Vendor health check