Interim Chief Restructuring Officer

Executive responsibility at the point of constraint

• Establish a rolling cash forecast reconciled to bank balances, purchase commitments and realistic customer receipts; expose uncertainty rather than burying it in a single collection assumption.
• Introduce payment prioritisation that protects essential production, workforce obligations and critical supply while escalating exceptions through an explicit authority framework.
• Compare the cash effects of product rationalisation, stock reduction, pricing changes and capacity adjustments, including implementation costs and service consequences.
• Lead a fact-based dialogue with finance providers and owners, presenting one reconciled account of liquidity, downside exposure and decisions required.

Cash actions must be assessed for their second-order effects. A production stop may release purchasing cash but create restart costs, customer penalties or stranded stock; extending supplier terms may threaten the only qualified source of a critical component. Require each material intervention to show the cash timing, operating dependency, decision owner and reversal cost. The restructuring officer should make those trade-offs explicit in the weekly decision meeting and maintain a separate view of cash preserved through genuine improvement versus obligations merely pushed into a later period.

Experience that qualifies

Candidates should have personally led a manufacturing restructuring under cash pressure, with evidence of decisions carried from negotiation into execution. Strong treasury judgement, familiarity with inventory economics and the ability to explain recovery assumptions to sceptical stakeholders are essential. Experience should include working with local legal specialists when financial distress changes the board’s decision constraints.

Evidence of a recovery that can hold

The engagement should leave a reliable cash process, named owners for recovery measures and an operating plan that survives a downside case. Assessment should distinguish recurring cash improvements from deferred payments, one-off asset sales and temporary creditor support. Candidates should be ready to discuss an anonymised intervention that preserved operating continuity without overstating the business’s capacity to recover.