How long does it take to assess whether a company is salvageable?

In my practice, 48 to 72 hours is enough to run all four signals. No more. Beyond that, you're looking for reassurance rather than decisions. A distressed company cannot afford the luxury of time.

Do you need a leader already in place, or can the takeover be solo?

Going solo is rare. Ideally, you keep the internal know-how core (second signal) and bring in an external interim leader who takes on the truth-telling posture (fourth signal). The combination internal know-how + external posture is what works.

What is the difference between turnaround and liquidation?

Liquidation legally ends the company and sells assets to the highest bidder. Turnaround under judicial protection (Chapter 11 in the US, sauvegarde or redressement in France, réorganisation judiciaire in Belgium) freezes liabilities, protects operations, and gives 6 to 18 months to rebuild under a court-approved plan. That window is where a turnaround can actually be executed.

Can a company with no customers left still be saved?

Very rarely. If the first signal (perceived market value) is completely extinguished, there is no commercial anchor to rebuild from. You can revive a dormant brand through a complete repositioning, but that is a five to ten year project, not a turnaround.

Why emphasise horizontal hierarchy in a turnaround?

Because in a company in crisis, strategic intelligence sits with operational staff, not with executive committees that lie to themselves. Horizontal hierarchy means going down to the workshops, the service desks, the field — and bringing information back up without filter. Without that, you lead blind.

Do you work as a salaried executive or on missions?

Always on mission, on invoiced services — never as a salaried employee. Each mandate is negotiated upfront: monthly fixed fee, expenses reimbursement, optional success fee indexed on measurable results. Immediate availability. NDA signed on request.

4 Signs a Struggling Company Can Still Be Saved

Thirty years of taking over companies in commercial court, of arbitrating apparently lost causes, of signing cheques or refusing to sign them have taught me one thing: you do not save a company because you love the challenge. You save it because the signals allow it. The rest is ego.

When a file lands on my desk, I run it through four filters before I say yes. Not five. Not three. Four. If all four signals are green, the company is salvageable. If even one is deep red, I refuse. It is that simple — and that brutal.

Here are the four signals I look for first.

1. Does the product (or service) still have perceived value in the market?

This is the most brutal and the most simple test. When you pick up the phone and call three of the company's customers, what do they say spontaneously?

If they say « yeah, they used to be good » in the past tense, it is over. You are buying a shell, you are paying for a name, and you will be scraping residual goodwill that has already evaporated.

If they say « they have something nobody else has, but we can't get hold of them anymore », you have something. The product still exists. The value is there. It is the sales machine, the after-sales, the production, the delivery that have collapsed. All of that can be rebuilt. Product value cannot.

At Clarilog in 2011, this signal made me say yes. The company was almost bankrupt, but its existing clients — BNP Paribas, Saint-Gobain, Sodexo — kept using the software every day and still preferred it to competitors. Use-value was intact. That was the foundation. The rest, we rebuilt.

2. Is there at least one person inside who actually knows the job?

Not an executive. Not a title. One person, or a nucleus of three to five, who knows how to do it. The senior developer who knows the code in his bones. The workshop that can build the product without a blueprint. The salesperson with 15 years of client relationships who still picks up the phone at 9 PM.

A company is not an org chart. It is know-how embodied in human beings. If that know-how has left — cascade resignations, retirements not replaced, succession never planned — you are buying a brand without muscle. And rebuilding know-how takes five to ten years. Not a turnaround.

When I took over Carat Duchatelet in 2014, the company was emerging from a very difficult period. But walking into the workshops, I saw craftsmen who still knew how to fit armour onto a Mercedes S600 like nowhere else. Thirteen distinct trades preserved, transmitted. The know-how was there. The rest — strategy, sales, financing — could all be handled.

3. Does the financial situation allow a clean restart now, not in six months?

This is where most good intentions break. You want to save, you are ready to invest time and energy — but you arrive three months too late. Liabilities have exploded, creditors have turned hostile, cash has dried up so completely that you cannot even pay the critical suppliers needed to fulfil the order that would bring cash in.

The right moment to take over is not « when the file becomes clearer ». It is now, or earlier. The legal toolkit matters here: judicial reorganisation in Belgium, sauvegarde or redressement in France, US Chapter 11 — all of them freeze liabilities while you take over the assets and restart operations.

Without that freeze, you are running with a weight tied to your ankle: each additional month of turnaround costs more than the previous one.

4. Is there a leader — current or incoming — ready to tell the truth, and to tell it early?

This is the most discreet signal and the most decisive. The first three are about the company. The fourth is about the person who will lead it through the recovery.

In a distressed company, the first piece of information to start lying is internal reporting. Not out of malice — out of comfort. Everyone delays bad news. Sales inflate the pipeline. Controllers smooth margins. CFOs roll supplier debt to next month. Each one buys a few weeks.

The only person capable of pulling the company out of its spiral is the one who says: « Stop. We look at the truth. Now. Together ». And looks at it without flinching.

A company does not die from its numbers. It dies from what people refused to look at.

If you do not have someone in the cast capable of holding that posture — neither internally nor through an interim manager — then the turnaround will not happen. The machine will keep lying to itself until the breaking point.

And if all four signals are green?

If all four signals are green, then a turnaround is possible. Possible, not guaranteed. But the ground allows it. From there, the rest is execution: speed, horizontal hierarchy, listening to operational staff, negotiation with banks and shareholders, internal communication that doesn't lie, fast allocation of cash to what produces value.

Execution is my craft. But without those four signals green, the most brilliant execution in the world will save nothing. That is why I spend 48 to 72 hours on a file before committing — to verify the four, in the flesh, not on PowerPoint.

If you recognise your own company — or one belonging to an executive you are advising — in something resembling the situation described here, the right moment to talk is not in six months. It is now.