The Financial Restructuring Tool Set: How to Fix Your Broken Balance Sheet

Excessive corporate debt can lead to financial distress, which prevents a business from realizing its full potential. When this occurs, a company transforms into a "zombie," incapable of making essential investments for its future growth or attracting the resources required to execute its business strategy effectively. In this book, the restructuring veteran Mike Harmon provides an indispensable go-to guide tailored for executives, business owners, boards of directors, creditors, advisors, and investors grappling with financial distress. He equips stakeholders with an invaluable tool kit for mending a company's fractured balance sheet while demystifying complex techniques and explaining restructuring methods in an accessible fashion. Readers will acquire the skills needed to detect early warning signs of distress and to formulate a financial restructuring plan that reduces the risk of future trouble. They will learn how an effective plan optimizes the objectives of a company's various stakeholders, its ability to service future financial obligations, its legal and contractual constraints, and its future prospects and business strategy. Written for both current and aspiring practitioners, The Financial Restructuring Tool Set is not just a survival guide-it is a blueprint for transformation, empowering stakeholders to achieve a brighter, more prosperous future.

Table of Contents:
1. Introduction 2. Corporate Debt 3. Financial Distress and Corporate Zombies 4. The Fundamentals of Restructuring 5. Business Valuation 6. Bankruptcy 7. The Financial Restructuring Tool Set—The Bankruptcy Tools 8. The Financial Restructuring Tool Set—The Out-of-Court Tools 9. Nondebt Liabilities 10. Distressed Investing 11. International Restructuring 12. Preventing Distress and Some Final Thoughts Appendix A: The Jargon Guide Appendix B: Priority Chart Appendix C: The Double Dip Structure Appendix D: Resources Index Acknowledgements

About the Author :
Mike Harmon has focused on distressed companies and restructuring situations for more than thirty years, largely as a senior investment professional at Oaktree Capital Management, a leading private investment firm. He is a lecturer at Stanford University’s Graduate School of Business and the managing partner of Gaviota Advisors, where he advises and invests in small- to medium-sized companies.

Review :
Mike Harmon worked at Oaktree for twenty-one years, acquiring companies via the medium of distress. In The Financial Restructuring Tool Set, he has admirably distilled his experience in corporate restructuring into plain talk and actionable advice. At last, a practical and accessible guide to addressing companies burdened with excessive debt. Drawing on his extensive career in investing and his role as a lecturer at Stanford, Harmon simplifies the complex world of financial restructuring, making it clear and understandable for all. This book is an essential resource for anyone working for, engaging with, or investing in a financially stressed company. I only wish it had existed when I began my career in investing. This book will immediately become an essential guide for everyone who wants to understand how corporate law and corporate finance principles are deployed in real-life restructuring scenarios. It is particularly useful for executives, board directors, and other nonspecialists who encounter restructurings episodically and need a rigorous but accessible instruction manual. The Financial Restructuring Tool Set is the obvious go-to source for practitioners and MBA students seeking a clear, readable, and highly instructive guide through the concepts and practice of financial restructuring. The accessibility and conceptual strength of Harmon’s writing is reflected in the big success of his Stanford MBA course on the same subject. This is the first and definitive practical guide to financial restructuring, a must-have resource for investors, creditors, lawyers, entrepreneurs, advisors, students, and anyone else who may encounter or have an interest in corporate distress. Harmon’s book seamlessly bridges theory with practice and offers a panoramic review of the corporate restructuring process and the tools to manage it. Backed by actionable frameworks and real-world examples, written in plain English, this book provides a chart to navigate turbulent waters. With an engaging style, [Mike Harmon] skips the dryness of the topic. [His] experience… makes it clear and understandable. The gap between theory and practice has been bridged. Harmon maintains readers’ interest at a high level by sprinkling the book with facts and observations that are anything but mundane. A comprehensive account … TheFinancial Restructuring Tool Set is up to date and authoritative.