The era of easy money is over. Following years of unprecedented global disruptions—from supply chain shocks and geopolitical conflicts to persistent inflation and aggressive interest rate hikes—the economic bill has come due. Today, the resulting market volatility is exposing a significant number of companies to heightened financial distress. Bankruptcies are surging, and a record number of private equity-sponsored companies are actively seeking protection from creditors.
For sophisticated investors and executives, this volatility creates a generational opportunity—if you know where to look and how to act.
In this intensive 4-day program, we adopt a rigorous “value investing” approach to analyzing special situations. You will learn how to accurately assess the depth of financial distress in individual businesses, quantify the investment opportunity, and execute the strategic steps required to ensure an acceptable return for the activist investor.
Program Architecture: A Total Balance Sheet Approach
We will dissect the restructuring imperatives across both sides of the balance sheet:
- The Left-Hand Side (Asset Optimization & Turnaround): We address what must be done operationally within the business to drive a successful turnaround. This segment focuses on crucial turnaround restructuring tools, including mastering the 13-week cash flow forecast and managing the critical organizational and human dynamics necessary to steer a company out of crisis.
- The Right-Hand Side (Liability Management & Capital Structure): We analyze how to strategically restructure liabilities. You will learn how to engineer and extend the liability “runway,” securing the vital breathing space a business needs to stabilize, recover, and scale.
How you will benefit
- Understand the key success factors to turning around a distressed situation
- Appreciate the hurdles and solutions to restructuring the liabilities in order to buy time for the turnaround
- Assess both financial restructuring and business turnaround and their integration
- Learn about the legal environment in distressed situations
- Explore the game theory behind investing and restructuring in distressed situations
- Explore the theory and practical application of investing in distressed situations
- Develop a thorough understanding of the fundamentals of value investing
- Estimate the fundamental value of a business using discounted cash flow valuation
- Examine debt capacity and its implications for investors
- Learn to use the content of the typical capitalization table
- Gain the skills to perform a ‘waterfall’ analysis
- Identify potential investment opportunities
- Practice with building an investment thesis
- Improve your negotiation skills to earn an exceptional return on investment in special situations
Program length
4 days
| Day 1 | 09:00 – 18:00 |
| Day 2 | 09:00 – 18:00 |
| Day 3 | 09:00 – 18:00 |
| Day 4 | 09:00 – 18:00 |
Next step
We offer carefully crafted learning paths designed to help you dive deeper into various facets of finance. Take the next step in your professional learning path by choosing one or more of our specialized programs, for example:
During this program we will work through a series of conceptual and numeric examples, conducted as group work and discussed in plenary session, enabling you to deepen, and exhibit, your understanding of the fundamental concepts. The business cases will also enable you to practice the steps in the investment analysis process being taught in the program. The process and the conceptual basis for this approach to value investing in distressed situations will be explained and elaborated on Day 1, and the refinement and application of the process will be further illustrated and practiced in the case studies and class discussions of the remaining days.
Day 1 | Games and the legal backdrop of the restructuring
- The game theory behind investing and restructuring distressed situations
- Identifying the legal pathways for financial restructuring
- Estimating the value available for distribution
Day 2 | Value Investing and right-sizing the capital structure
- Estimating where in the capital structure the cash flow and value will cascade
- Identifying the fulcrum security
- Assessing the need for turnaround, and potential for recovery from a restructuring
Day 3 | Turnaround management – Restructuring the LHS of the balance sheet
- Case analysis assessing a financial restructuring
- Identifying the challenges to achieving resolution of the financial restructuring
- Case analysis of a distressed situation from the management perspective
Day 4 | Bringing it all together and negotiating a restructuring
- Case analysis assessing a restructuring and exchange offer
- The ‘human side’ of distressed investing and advisory
- Negotiating a financial restructuring and rights offering
Program preparation
There is some preparatory work required for this program. Pre-readings consist of case materials, chapters of a book and/or a few articles. These materials will be made available on a password protected webpage a few weeks prior to the program.
To ensure maximum benefit from the program for participant and fellow-participants, we strongly advise to prepare prior to attending.
This program is designed for institutional investors, private equity professionals, distressed debt analysts, turnaround advisors, and executives who need the framework, tools, and tactical playbook to convert corporate distress into value creation.
Prerequisite
Proficiency in English is vital for following this training program effectively.
Is this program not the right fit for you?
We offer other programs which you might find more interesting or useful, such as:
