Adviser — Portfolio Company Turnaround

Diagnostic approach

Assess each business through its cash runway, operating constraints, management capability and realistic recovery options. Separate a financing problem from a weak competitive position or persistent execution failure. Identify where additional capital would enable a credible plan and where it would merely fund continuing losses.

Recommendations and challenge

Develop company-specific intervention priorities, then compare their funding demands and management requirements at portfolio level. Advise on the sequencing of executive support, operational improvement, refinancing or strategic alternatives. Make dependencies and uncertainties clear, particularly where several businesses compete for the same capital or specialist resources.

Use a common investment decision language while preserving each business’s distinct recovery logic. A consumer business may need assortment and channel changes; an industrial operation may need capacity, reliability or contract intervention. Compare proposed support on the basis of additional value that can realistically be preserved, the capital at risk and management’s capacity to execute. The adviser should identify where the owner’s preferred timetable conflicts with operating reality and explain whether staged funding or a narrower recovery scope would produce a more defensible outcome.

Who should apply

Relevant candidates will have worked across more than one turnaround and demonstrate judgement about when not to pursue a recovery strategy. They should understand consumer and industrial operating economics, investment governance and the practical limits of owner influence. Strong candidates can explain both a successful intervention and a case where an early change of direction reduced further value loss.

What the engagement leaves behind

Expected outputs include prioritised intervention papers, explicit funding gates and a monitoring approach tailored to each recovery thesis. The adviser supplies independent judgement; investment approvals and operating authority remain with the relevant decision-makers. Recommendations should be sufficiently transparent to challenge without requiring confidence in the adviser’s reputation alone.