Recovery Strategies from Financial Distress

During this Covid-19 crisis, a large number of companies, particularly SMEs, are likely to find it difficult to survive. They face financial distress. To help them navigate through these difficult times, I designed a general framework to navigate through the crisis: https://f5a501ec-daa5-41cc-8d8a-0db488a47626.usrfiles.com/ugd/f5a501_8f38b707573d4aa1b0c73b022763a548.pdf. Each of these broad decisions can be discussed in length and supplemented with the new regulations. For example, in the case of the workforce, layoffs may be the last decisions to be undertaken as, currently the government is helping companies cover 80% of the costs up to £2500 per month. Restructuring debt is likely to costly, but the government has set up some help. Generating cash from the operating activity by minimizing the stock holding period and the debtors payment period, while maximizing the creditors payment period may be dealt on case by case as trade creditors and debtors may also face cash shortage problem. Overall, the framework is general and cannot be considered as one size fits all, but I hope it will constitute a first stage of discussion and resolution of financial distress.