Leading Corporate Turnaround How Leaders Fix Troubled Companies

by Slatter, Stuart; Lovett, David; Barlow, Laura

• ISBN13: 9780470025598
• ISBN10: 047002559X
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2006-02-03
• Publisher: Jossey-Bass

Summary

Leadership is never more crucial than when corporate survival is at stake. But the days of the tough guys are over. The leaders who are driving today's sustainable turnarounds understand that the answers to a distressed company's problems lie almost always within the firm itself - usually at middle manager level and below. The secret is cooperation. Drawing on interviews with top company doctors and advisers, as well as on the authors' own experience, Leading Corporate Turnarounds explores seven key leadership and management skills required for successful turnaround, and shows why quickly gaining the buy-in and trust of all stakeholders is the key to ultimate success. Written by the founding directors of the Society of Turnaround Professionals (STP), with a proposed Foreword by the Society's Patron Sir John Harvey-Jones Considers the different drivers of turnaround, the alternatives to it, and the restructuring processes required to move beyond crisis stabilization to sustainable change Features international case studies from leading companies including BT, Virgin Express, Arthur Andersen, Parmalat, GE, Lee Cooper, New Look and IBM

Author Biography

Stuart Slatter
Founding partner of Stuart Slatter & Company, Chairman of Stuart Slatter Training and a Visiting Fellow in Strategic and International Management at the London Business School (LBS).
Stuart Slatter has over twenty-five years of experience in providing strategic consultancy advice and management education to senior management throughout the world. While a full time faculty member at LBS, he was Dean for Executive Education, Director of the Senior Executive Programme, and Chairman of the Strategic and International Management Department. He has been a Visiting Professor at the University of California (UCLA) and at the University of Capetown. Prior to joining LBS, he was Managing Director of a subsidiary of a UK public company, and a senior management consultant with Booz, Allen & Hamilton in New York specialising in marketing strategy.
He holds a law degree from Cambridge University, an MBA degree from Stanford Business School, and a PhD in marketing from London University. He is a qualified barrister-at-law, and is the author of a number of books and articles, including “Gambling on Growth”, Wiley (1992), and “Corporate Turnaround”, Penguin Books (1999). He was one of the founding directors of the Society of Turnaround Professionals in the UK, and can be contacted via www.slatter.co.uk.

David C. Lovett
David Lovett, a Managing Director with AlixPartners and a member of the European Executive group of the firm, is a business graduate, a fellow of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of England and Wales, a fellow and a founding member of the Society of Turnaround Professionals. Before joining AlixPartners, David was with Andersen for 18 years, where he formed Andersen’s London-based turnaround practice in the early 1990s and subsequently led the Global Turnaround practice. He co-authored “Corporate Turnaround” with Stuart Slatter in 1999.
During the last 30 years, David has advised all the classes of stakeholders in troubled companies.He has led many corporate restructurings and turnarounds in both an advisory and officer capacity serving as Chief Financial Officer and Chief Restructuring Officer.
David has extensive cross border restructuring experience and is familiar with the changing trends in insolvency and restructuring legislation. He is driven by a desire to minimise economic loss to stakeholders while his clients manage the turbulence of forced transformation.
AlixPartners is recognised internationally as the “industry standard” for solving complex business challenges, helping companies improve operating and financial performance, and restoring corporate value.
Founded in 1981, it has been retained by hundreds of companies throughout the USA, Europe, Asia and Latin America and has worked in virtually all industries and sectors.

Laura Barlow
Laura Barlow is a Director in AlixPartners’ European Turnaround and Restructuring practice. Over the past 15 years she has been an adviser to both creditors and debtors in troubled situations and has worked with numerous companies to help them achieve operational turnaround and financial restructuring. She has taken interim management roles in several troubled companies, restoring stability and leading the development and implementation of turnaround plans. Her current focus is on providing restructuring advisory services to corporates, including taking Chief Restructuring Officer positions where appropriate.
Laura is a graduate of Oxford University, a Chartered Accountant and SFA Securities Representative. She is a regular speaker at European conferences on turnaround and restructuring and at the London Business School on the Managing Corporate Turnarounds course.

Table of Contents

About the Authors.

Acknowledgements.

Introduction.

1. The Leadership Challenge.

2. The Turnaround Framework.

3. Before the Turnaround Begins.

4. New Leadership.

5. Crisis Stabilisation.

6. Stakeholder Management.

7. Strategic Focus.

8. Changing Critical Business Processes.

9. Leading Organisational Change.

10. Financial Restructuring.

Appendix Society of Turnaround Professionals.

Index.