Previous Page
Spotlight On... SPOTLIGHT ON...
Accelerated Mergers & Acquisitions
Tyrone Courtman, PKF Cooper Parry
If a business is underperforming, it is vital to identify and resolve any issues that may be affecting profitability. Early recognition and intervention of a business in distress is essential in protecting shareholder value and provide owners with options to protect value. Here, Tyrone Courtman discusses accelerated merger and acquisition.
T Q Q
yrone Courtman, a partner in PKF Cooper Parry, is responsible for leading the firm’s Corporate Restructuring team. Tyrone is a Fellow member of the ICAEW, and
a Licensed Insolvency Practitioner. He is a former President of TMA UK and serves as a member of the ICAEW’s Insolvent and Restructuring special interest Group. Tyrone is currently President of the European Association of Certified turnaround Professionals.
What more can you tell us about your firm?
PKF Cooper Parry holds the number one market position of acting for more locally owned private
businesses in the East
Midlands with a turnover in excess of £5m than any other accounting, tax and advisory firm. With roots going back over 100 years we remain truly committed to the region and have ambition to go much further.
Why might a company require an accelerated M&A process?
The lending environment post the credit crunch has placed considerable financing constraints on the needs of many businesses, leaving them vulnerable to the potentially
value destructive formal recovery and insolvency processes.
In such situations, when securing fresh cash/ investment is critical to the businesses very survival, accelerated M&A processes facilitate a quick turnaround in the businesses financial fortunes. They often resolve the immediate balance sheet restructuring issues so as to facilitate a turnaround in the businesses operations in order to improve its trading performance in time, through greater commercial leverage of their combined positions and greater economies of scale.
What are the different options available to companies in this area and what are the potential benefits of the process?
Q
Different options maybe to affect a sale of substantially the whole of a company’s business and assets as a going concern or trade debt for equity or issue new equity, diluting the former owners interest in exchange for desperately needed new monies. Or go bust. The choice is often that simple bringing many frustrated equity holders to the negotiating table.
Q
Do you have a success story that you can share with us?
A number involving an accelerated M&A process resulting in a sale of current equity
positions in exchange for new money and a number where two competing parties have been brought together albeit their marriage has had to be consummated through a formal insolvency process like a Pre-pack administration.
Q
Is there anything else you would like to add?
Formal insolvency processes can typically be value destructive for all concerned, including the very business at the heart of the financial difficulties, resulting in potentially very good but poorly managed business ceasing to be. Accelerated M&A enables through an honest reconciliation of where the various stakeholders interests sit in the insolvency pecking order to resolve their differences, to secure the very new investment required to take the business forwards, and to prospectively deliver the necessary returns for the new investors. They help to save the business to preserve jobs and secure a future in which the true enterprise value of the business can be realised for the benefit not just of the equity holders but for the benefit of the wider society as a whole.
Contact Tyrone Courtman
Partner & Head of Restructuring
Email: tyronec@pkfcooperparry.com Web: www.pkfcooperparryrestructuring.com