Restructuring Cash-Waterfall Director

The mandate

The distributor enters formal restructuring with uncertain daily receipts, suppliers threatening hold and secured lenders imposing cash controls. Existing thirteen-week forecasts aggregate sites and assume invoice due dates predict payment behaviour, while emergency disbursements are agreed through private calls. The defined problem is to create a lawful, operationally informed and auditable cash waterfall that preserves value without allowing the loudest stakeholder to become payment priority.

The deliverables are a receipt confidence model, payment-claim taxonomy, supplier and site criticality map, weekly waterfall, decision-rights charter, variance evidence pack and restructuring liquidity playbook. The design must distinguish payroll, tax, protected or court-directed payments, secured-lender conditions, critical supply, customer commitments, ordinary trade claims and discretionary preservation spend, using legal interpretations supplied by appointed restructuring counsel.

Four milestones span five months: week three accepts the opening cash and claim baseline; week eight approves waterfall classes, evidence and authority; week fourteen completes four controlled weekly cycles with variance and challenged requests; and week twenty-two delivers the embedded process, scenarios, remaining disputes and creditor committee assurance. Billing is released against the four accepted milestones.

Acceptance requires every material payment to show claim class, legal basis, operational consequence, liquidity effect, decision authority and retained evidence; actual receipts and disbursements must reconcile daily; and selected sites must apply criticality criteria consistently. The process must survive a customer shortfall, supplier ultimatum and lender restriction without relying on consultant-only relationships or undocumented exceptions.

The client provides bank access views, receipts, payables, contracts, payroll and tax calendars, security arrangements, legal opinions, site operating plans, supplier information and creditor protocols. The consultant does not provide legal advice, authorise payments, negotiate debt, appoint suppliers, direct insolvency officers, communicate with courts or decide employee actions. Formally authorised officers execute the waterfall.

Why this is external work

Procurement, sites, employees, lenders and restructuring advisers each have legitimate but incompatible definitions of critical. Finance lacks a neutral evidence standard and is under daily pressure to release cash. An external restructuring specialist can build a transparent decision mechanism, expose consequence and preserve legal authority while preventing informal influence from consuming scarce liquidity or undermining creditor confidence.

What you will own

• Reconstruct cash by account, entity, restriction, value date, receipt source, confidence and control availability.
• Classify payment claims by legal treatment supplied by counsel, operational consequence, timing, amount and reversibility.
• Build supplier and site criticality using substitution time, inventory cover, customer dependency, safety and cash preservation.
• Design weekly waterfall decisions with evidence, challenge, authority, dissent, conditions, expiry and auditable communication.
• Reconcile daily receipts and disbursements to forecast, approved payment lists, bank evidence and remaining headroom.
• Stress customer shortfall, supplier hold, lender restriction, tax deadline and operational disruption across the forecast horizon.
• Transfer the operating playbook, variance cadence, decision log and unresolved claims to authorised restructuring finance owners.

Candidate qualifications

• Has designed cash and payment governance inside a court-supervised or creditor-controlled operating restructuring.
• Understands secured controls, protected claims, critical suppliers, payroll, tax, receipts and site continuity when legal priorities and operating survival compete under scarcity.
• Can build a thirteen-week view from behavioural receipts and executable payments rather than contractual due dates alone.
• Has resisted stakeholder pressure through transparent evidence while preserving counsel and insolvency officers’ formal authority.
• Has run repeated payment cycles with daily bank reconciliation, shortfall attribution, forecast variance explanation and documented conditional approvals under creditor scrutiny.
• Leaves a client-operated cash room and decision record rather than remaining the indispensable approver.

Non-negotiables

• Can maintain the Frankfurt hybrid cadence, weekly payment rooms and both designated operating-site observations.
• Will disclose relationships with lenders, suppliers, restructuring firms, insolvency practitioners and transaction counterparties.
• Brings cash-waterfall design in formal distress; ordinary working-capital improvement alone is insufficient.
• Will not give legal advice, authorise payments or permit undocumented exceptions outside the approved waterfall.

1. 49 words maximum. Which evidence would make a small supplier more critical than a much larger claimant?
2. 49 words maximum. How would you forecast receipts when contractual due dates have ceased to predict behaviour?
3. 49 words maximum. What payment request should never be decided through an undocumented restructuring call?