DUE DILIGENCE

DUE DILIGENCE – WORKING ON AN ACQUISITION A company had been very successful in its field for several years and attracted the attention of a larger competitor, who wished to buy them.  They entered talks and the company employed a firm of corporate finance advisers at a firm of accountants to undertake limited due diligence [...]

DUE DILIGENCE 2019-07-29T13:24:16+01:00

MERGER

WORKING ON A MERGER A company had been successful for many years and knew its competitors well.  The owner of one of these had retired and now wanted to sell up.  There were many reasons why a merger of the two businesses would make good sense, if the details could be resolved to everyone’s satisfaction. [...]

MERGER 2019-07-29T13:24:16+01:00

PLANNING

LONG TERM BUSINESS PLANNING A tourism and leisure company was considering whether to invest in a significant expansion project.  They produced their annual accounts in time for the nine month filing deadline, but not sooner, and had limited monthly accounting information. The owner had developed a business plan that involved significant expansion, and had access [...]

PLANNING 2019-07-29T13:24:16+01:00

MAKING SENSE

MAKING SENSE OF LIMITED INFORMATION A small specialist distribution company can be very hard to manage.  The Managing Director (who was also the majority shareholder) found it very difficult to understand his cashflow and identify spare cash in his business.  The business has both seasonal work variation and also random fluctuations between large and small [...]

MAKING SENSE 2019-07-29T13:24:16+01:00

ENGAGEMENT

IMPROVED ENGAGEMENT BY FINANCE TEAM A manufacturing company received its management accounts every month after about four weeks, by which time they were not very useful.  All the Finance resource was used to produce accounts, and not much else. The Managing Director thought that more should be possible, and asked us to come in and [...]

ENGAGEMENT 2019-07-29T13:24:16+01:00

CRISIS

MANAGING A CRISIS A manufacturing company had lost a major customer and were in a very tight cash position.  Their bankers had sent in reporting accountants and their critical report had coincided with the decision of the existing finance director to leave with immediate effect.  The bank manager was due in the next morning at [...]

CRISIS 2019-07-29T13:24:16+01:00

UNDERSTANDING

MANAGING SENSE OF A COMBINED BUSINESS A manufacturing and services company had been run for many years by two highly experienced engineers.  Initially starting as a pure services company, they had developed a product range which they sold to external customers and also used within service projects that they undertook.  They had a book-keeping function [...]

UNDERSTANDING 2019-07-29T13:24:16+01:00

MATERNITY

MANAGING MATERNITY LEAVE RISKS A manufacturing services company had benefited from stable staffing for many years, until the senior finance employee announced she was due to go on maternity leave.  We were asked to assist the directors to come up with a robust staffing plan to manage the risks of this process. We met with [...]

MATERNITY 2019-07-29T13:24:16+01:00

EXPANSION

SUPPORTING BUSINESS EXPANSION A specialist distribution company had been growing for many years and the senior finance employee had left the business.  A temporary resource was visiting to provide monthly management accounts but there was no reporting against budgets or any forecasts. The company had recently carried out a review of its operations.  This included [...]

EXPANSION 2019-07-29T13:24:16+01:00

SUCCESSION

SUPPORTING A SUCCESSION PROCESS A services company was going through a retirement succession process.  The new owners, who were existing directors of the business, wanted an independent pair of eyes to validate the cashflow to assess the affordability of the deferred consideration payments.  We analysed the company’s in-house forecasts and compared them with forecasts produced [...]

SUCCESSION 2019-07-29T13:24:16+01:00