Interim Chief Restructuring Officer

Decisions to lead

The restructuring officer will reconcile competing views of liquidity, trading prospects and asset value into a common fact base. Prepare a recovery plan with explicit dependencies: customer retention, supplier continuity, capacity utilisation, asset disposals and funding availability. Each proposed concession should be linked to an executable operational step, with the consequences of delay made clear.

Negotiations must be supported by structured information sharing, consistent downside assumptions and a record of material decisions. The role will coordinate finance, operations and specialist advisers while maintaining a clear distinction between management recommendations and board approvals. Where liquidity becomes acute, escalate promptly for jurisdiction-specific advice rather than assuming the commercial plan resolves legal concerns.

Prepare a negotiation fact pack that can withstand reconciliation from headline recovery value to individual assumptions. For each proposed milestone, identify the evidence of completion, the party responsible and the consequence of a miss. Where parties disagree on forecasts, show the commercial decisions implied by each view rather than averaging them into artificial consensus. The officer should maintain a live account of remaining liquidity and negotiating flexibility so that management does not continue pursuing a preferred solution after the conditions supporting it have materially changed.

Candidate evidence

Candidates should bring first-hand experience of lender negotiations in a stressed industrial setting. They should have defended a recovery forecast, managed an operational setback during negotiations and converted a financing agreement into operating discipline. The ability to communicate difficult information plainly is as important as modelling skill.

Recovery milestones worth tracking

Progress should be demonstrated through forecast accuracy, delivery of agreed operating actions, stability of essential supply and the closure of financing conditions. A durable outcome includes an escalation process for missed milestones and a management team capable of sustaining the recovery after the interim appointment ends.