Crisis management when a company is in financial difficulties is about quelling the understandable panic and taking a long, hard look at managing the business’ cash flow and the potential for action that makes the business viable.

Running out of cash is the cause of most business failures where the cash flow test of insolvency applies such that a company is insolvent if it is unable to meet its liabilities as and when they fall due. This doesn’t mean the business should be closed down but it does mean the directors should take clear steps to deal with the financial situation.

The first thing directors need to appreciate is that their primary consideration is to protect the interests of creditors rather than that of shareholders. This is where an insolvency or turnaround professional as an outsider can help by bringing an objective assessment of the personal risk when making decisions and the prospects that turnaround initiatives can be taken to restore the business to...

Research by a provider of audit, tax and consulting services has found that only 21% of board members think corporate governance is critical for a business to achieve success.

The findings by RSM also revealed that 96 per cent of company Board members it surveyed expected to see an increase in the number of criminal prosecutions of those senior executives and organisations implicated for poor risk management.

The issue of corporate governance has been under review by the FRC (Financial Reporting Council) for some time following high-profile collapses of businesses like BHS, Patisserie Valerie, Carillion and most recently Thomas Cook.

In its most recent annual report, the FRC found that that “audit quality is still not consistently reaching the necessary high standards expected”.

More than a year ago, a review of the FRC itself led by Sir John Kingman proposed the establishment of a new regulator, the Audit, Reporting and Governance Authority, but this was not acted upon...

The newly-published insolvency figures for Q3 (July to September) show a massive increase in the number of businesses entering Administrations.

A mid-October report by Begbies Traynor reported that the number of British businesses in significant financial distress has risen by 40% since the Brexit vote – with those in the property, construction, retail and the travel sectors the hardest hit and 489,000 companies in significant distress up by 22,000 on this time last year.

This was followed by KPMG’s recent analysis of London Gazette notices of companies entering into Administration and the picture became clearer with yesterday’s statistics from the Insolvency Service.

Administrations increased by 20% in the last quarter, compared to the previous quarter, to reach their highest level since Q1 2014. CVLs (Company Voluntary Liquidations) rose by only 2.3% compared to the previous quarter but were still at their highest quarterly level since Q1 2012.

The...

Commentators have been quick to predict the death of the package holiday and in some cases of much of the travel industry following the demise of Thomas Cook in September.

But is this really the case?

Johan Lundgren, the chief executive of easyJet, argues that it is too soon to predict the demise of the travel industry, or indeed of package holidays.

In an article in the Daily Telegraph he says: “sales of holiday packages have grown faster than the economy every year for the past 10 years”.

There is no doubt, however, that technology has made a significant difference to the way people search, book and pay for their holidays.

Lundgren acknowledges that requirements and buying methods have changed significantly: “Rapid development in technology and AI, combined with a focus on data now allows the customer to find holidays suited to them online”.

Holiday companies, he said, needed to invest in technology to support customer interactions.

The tour...

This week the new management of WeWork the business space property rental company announced that it was preparing to axe 2,000, or 13%, of its workforce.

It has been calculated that up to 5,000, or a third, of the workforce will ultimately have to go.

This is the latest episode in an increasingly sorry saga, which last month saw its co-founder Adam Neumann step down as chief executive and relinquish control over the company. Mr Neumann also returned $5.9m worth of stock to the firm, which he had controversially received in exchange for his claim over the “We” trademark.

After announcing its intention to launch on the US stock market earlier in the year, the company, which has more than 500 locations in 29 countries, had to postpone its plans when its viability and corporate governance came under closer scrutiny.

The business, which was estimated to be worth some $47bn when the intended float was first unveiled has since had its credit rating downgraded by...

The pressure to do everything online is inexorable but what is the cost to businesses of IT failures?

Perhaps one of the most frequent and difficult issues facing SMEs is the seemingly frequent meltdowns of both banking systems and government websites.

This is without considering the issues of cyber-attacks on companies where the FSB has recently calculated UK small firms are subject to nearly 10,000 cyber-attacks a day, with over a million small firms hit by phishing, malware attacks and payment scams.

Obviously it is in businesses’ own interests to have robust IT systems in place including cyber security, but the frustrations of IT failures are a different issue and often not of their own making since the counter parties also need to have adequate IT systems and security at their end.

Since 2018 the FCA (Financial Conduct Authority) has required banks to publish information about the number of major operational and security incidents they have experienced.

...

There are no signs of the pressures on businesses easing off as insolvencies in the second quarter of 2019 (April to June) continued to climb, according to the latest figures released by the Insolvency Service.

While the number of compulsory insolvencies fell, there was a significant increase in the number of CVLs (Company Voluntary Liquidations), which showed a 6.9% increase, an increase of 2.6% in the total numbers of insolvencies compared to the first quarter of the year.

Compared to the same quarter in 2018 the numbers of insolvencies have risen by 11.9%, the highest underlying rate of insolvencies since 2014 according to the Insolvency Service.

It reports that those businesses that have fared worst in the second quarter have been “the accommodation and food service industry with 74 extra cases compared to the 12 months ending Q1 2019 (an increase of 3.4%) and the construction industry with 37 additional insolvencies (a 1.2% increase)”.

In early April a national newspaper published a report on the captain and crew of a cargo ship who had been stranded in the Persian Gulf off the UAE for 18 months without pay or food.

The cargo ship, said the report: “became a floating prison from which he and his 10-man crew could not escape without losing their claim to thousands of dollars in unpaid wages.” The ship’s owners had got into financial difficulties but would not sell the ship because they “would not get a good price”.

This is becoming an all too frequent story and in 2018 alone according to the IMO (International Maritime Organisation) an estimated 791 sailors on 44 ships had been abandoned in this way as a slump in orders led to overcapacity in cargo shipping and took its toll on owners.

Over the last couple of years, a global economic downturn has been gathering pace exacerbated by Trade Wars between the USA and China leading to lower demand on trade routes between...

This blog contrasts the fortunes of Majestic Wines with those of Debenhams as arguably examples that show how retail business can survive a rapidly changing environment.

There have been efforts by many struggling High Street retailers to improve their businesses by using an insolvency mechanism called the CVA (Company Voluntary Arrangement).

The most recent of these is Debenhams, which, having secured £200 million in new loans in March and followed with a pre-pack administration sale in early April, effectively wiping out its shareholders including the vociferous Mike Ashley who also owns Sports Direct and BHS.

It was acquired by new owners, a consortium of banks and hedge funds, who almost immediately launched a major store closure programme ultimately to involve 50 stores, in conjunction with a CVA aimed at persuading landlords to reduce the rent for remaining stores by up to 50%.

Debenhams’ sales had dropped by 7.4% in the previous six months but it has been...

In the late 1970s the then UK Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and US President Ronald Reagan both espoused the idea of minimal state regulation and of allowing free market capitalism to reign relatively unchecked in line with the theories of the Nobel prize-winning US economist Milton Friedman and The Chicago School, as it was called.

The assumption was that the weakest businesses should be allowed to fail and only the strongest would survive, which would benefit businesses, consumers and result in strong economies. It also assumed that the private sector would provide everything from energy to transport infrastructure to education at a lower cost than if they were state-funded.

Since then we have seen the 2008 global financial crisis, the introduction of a programme of austerity in the UK, central banks reducing and keeping interest rates artificially low, productivity in decline and a widening of the income inequality gap with increasing wealth...