Our Approach
In decades of credit, restructuring and risk work, we have seen how broken relationships can destroy value that sound financial analysis alone cannot protect. Three principles follow from that experience.
1. Create value before dividing it
Scarcity is often shaped by how a business or a deal is designed. Protecting margins, managing costs and defending a position can create and preserve value. We also ask what could expand the opportunities available to those involved.
In a restructuring, disputes over how to divide the available value can leave everyone worse off. Focusing first on the business’s viability can preserve value and improve the prospects for recovery.
A question we often ask: Is your organization mainly managing scarcity, or creating new value?
2. Share risks and rewards fairly
No business succeeds on its own. It depends on employees, suppliers, lenders, customers, communities and knowledge built by others over generations.
Concentrating rewards while shifting risks onto others can weaken those relationships. The consequences may emerge as staff turnover, supplier failure, tighter credit or reputational damage.
A question we often ask: Are the risks and rewards in your key relationships shared in a way that will last?
3. Build trust alongside controls
Controls matter. They support accountability and consistent decisions, but they cannot replace judgment or create trust on their own. Where distrust dominates, transactions can require more checks, more lawyers and more time.
In early warning work, relationship managers, credit officers and specialists need to share concerns and information promptly. Trust helps those conversations happen while there is still time to act.
A question we often ask: Do your relationships with lenders, suppliers, employees and partners make it possible to raise concerns early and work through disagreement?