Investors and owners engage FTI to manage companies through important stages in their corporate lives and to achieve critical goals. Typically, a senior member of FTI’s interim management practice assumes leadership of the corporation and reinforces its executive ranks with FTI interim management professionals who bring their industry and functional experience to bear on the client’s significant challenges and strategic initiatives.
Our professionals have held senior leadership positions in telecommunications, media, cable, and other industries. FTI’s interim management teams are most highly prized by clients when the nature of their business, its strategic and operational priorities, rapid change and challenging executive recruiting conditions combine to call for strong, experienced and cohesive teams to achieve results.
Such challenges may be strategic, operational or other performance weaknesses that are leading to declining profitability or loss of investor support or confidence. Others may be exciting, but short-lived, opportunities requiring a fully staffed, fully-skilled management team to execute quickly on a business plan. Still others can require particular industry knowledge or technology expertise to make them successful.
Investors have engaged FTI to provide corporate interim management in situations such as the following:
- To manage an industry roll-up, where intense cost and revenue management pressures made it impractical to wait to recruit a CEO and then a management team
- To manage troubled operations in the aftermath of the departure of a management team aligned with displaced equity investors, and
- To optimize performance of a company recently emerged from Chapter 11 and achieve a sale.
Members of FTI’s exceptional interim management practice have experience at the highest levels of a business. They have served as Board chair, Board member, CEO, COO, CTO, CFO and in a variety of functional leadership positions and have served together in multiple engagements. Our professionals are not advisors. They are business decision-makers and managers with industry grounding and experience.
FTI’s interim management professionals have particular expertise in technology-based companies, having held senior roles in telecommunications, network equipment, computing equipment, semiconductor, software, telecommunications, wireless and cable companies.
Turnaround and Crisis Management
Companies and their Boards turn to FTI for turnaround and crisis management support in accomplishing complex, high-stakes turnarounds. In a majority of engagements, senior members of FTI’s turnaround and crisis management practice join a client’s executive team, in key roles, for the duration of the turnaround. Many of these include Chapter 11 restructurings and similar insolvency proceedings.
Our professionals are experts at preparing companies for and leading them through restructuring processes. They provide on-site and end-to-end operational turnaround and crisis management. Each FTI professional has extensive experience advising, collaborating with and assisting Boards of Directors, executive teams and all functional operational areas on successfully navigating the process and optimizing outcomes.
In advance of, or anticipation of, a Chapter 11 filing, FTI’s turnaround and crisis management teams provide the following:
- Liquidity crisis management
- Implementation of disbursement and commitment controls
- Finance and procurement functional support
- Enhanced board, management and investor reporting
- Cost reduction initiatives
- Chapter 11 filing and early-case motion preparation
- Vendor risk management
- Operational continuity planning, and
- Communication planning for customers, employees, suppliers and other key constituencies
Chapter 11 turnaround and restructruing engagements include the following:
- Negotiating debtor-in-possession and exit financing
- Formulating and negotiating restructuring plans
- Managing cost-reduction, downsizing and profitability initiatives
- Senior executive support--strategy, sales, operations, marketing and finance
- Contract rejection, renegotiation and assumption
- Preparing Chapter 11 plans and disclosure statements
- Managing Creditor Committee and secured lender relationships and obtaining creditor support
- Managing Chapter 11 reporting and compliance
- Resolving claims and litigation, and
- Vendor replacement and migration
Our practice members have served at clients’ request as chief restructuring officer, interim CEO, CFO, COO, CTO and in a broad range of functional leadership roles.