Case Studies from PILOTpartners' roster of successful interim CFO assignments

Positioning the business for exit

• Reputationally damaging aborted sale process forced the private equity investor to rethink its exit strategy. This led to establishing a mandate to refinance the term debt and start a programme of value accretive acquisitions.
• Interim CFO achieved multi-bank refinancing within 4 months of joining the company. Despite a tight covenant situation, maintained strong bank relationships through to exit.
• Managed all financial aspects of competitive exit process culminating in a successful transaction at 19 x historic EBITDA and at the top end of Board and market expectations.
• The key driver in bank and bidder liaison and in financial, marketing, and legal / pension data pack preparation.

Restoring value through leadership

• This was a mandate to restore the confidence of shareholders in a business whose share price had collapsed to c.30% of its prior year value.
• Focus on bringing leadership to disincentivised finance function at a low ebb. Recruited by CEO to lead finance, shared service centre, business support, facilities, legal and company secretarial functions.
• Completed preliminary results briefing to analysts and 30 institutional investor presentations within 12 weeks of appointment.
• Restructured finance function to improve performance to the group's brands.
• Identified and resolved complex inherited derivatives positions.
• Completed £50m refinancing of the group. Share price rose to 75% of former value on departure 8 months later.

€800m kitchen products group – staunching the thirst for cash by changing European wide bad practice

• Cash forecasts for the quarter indicated a €100m net cash outflow for this pan European business with severe covenant testing implications for the group and private equity investor.
• Actions taken included: the introduction of factoring arrangements in France, the leasing of equipment in the UK, property sale & leaseback initiatives etc; liaison with other external parties such as tax authorities (e.g. time to pay agreements), suppliers, customers etc. across Europe in order to improve the cash profile at key periods; preparing weekly consolidated reporting to the Group CFO for the latest cash forecasts for the EMEA region.

• Total outflow over the period reduced to €24m; generating a pre-interest operating cash inflow of €2m
• Introduced quality 13 week cash forecasting procedures across 40 operating units throughout Europe, working closely with the respective finance teams to introduce robust, timely, quality forecast submissions
• The cash position was stabilised followed by modest cash generation in H2 of 2010.

Bringing common sense & strong treasury management to a failing business

• Appointed by two main lending banks as CRO to manage imminent covenant breach following a succession of poor forecasts and cash flow statements; subsequently interim group CFO & divisional MD of main London subsidiary.
• Led refinancing project resulting in successful injection of new equity and extended bank facilities.
• Negotiated substantial one year interest free 'loan' from HMRC.
• Led race for cash by setting up and managing significant debtors and costs reduction across the group.
• Reinstated divisional MD & FD roles which had been dropped by an earlier reorganisation in order to improve business and financial controls. Initiated 13 week cash flows. Replaced the Group CFO pending a new appointment.
• Personally handled the Christmas seasonal activity peak to the satisfaction of the group's previously critical three largest customers.