Creating financial security – shaping structures actively

Clear prospects of strategic and operational success are the basis of the sustainable stability of a company and the basis of its eligibility for financing. Therefore it is not only important for going public to comprehensibly convey the strategy and its prospects of success to the investors. Our experience shows that these aspects are become increasingly more decisive also for external lenders.

Financing partners primarily require informative annual financial statements, integral financial planning, management reports for periods of less than one year and regular talks with the banks in order to be adequately informed. We support you with the necessary measures and if required also assist you at the talks.

Above all in refinancing situations it is necessary to proceed with particular caution. Hence, for example, factors such as bullet maturity financial instruments, investment phases burdening cash flow or poor company data can make refinancing processes difficult. In these cases it all depends decisively on the appropriate presentation of the company and its eligibility for financing, the selection of the right banking partner and the definition of a realistic financing structure. In this case put your trust in the experience and the specialist knowledge of the PKF teams.

Thinking about the optimising of the financing in a company is fundamentally meaningful and in certain situations absolutely imperative, be it that the financing is too much orientated to payment at term or too short-term, there are too many or too few banks involved, that one has too little equity capital or excessively low indebtedness. Our team of experts has therefore made it its duty to regularly check the financing strategy and structure together with you. We hence make allowance for the importance of a functioning risk and opportunity controlling system as an elementary building block of the management.

By means of regularly used financial planning, bottlenecks and leeway in the financing structure are revealed. In that way adjustments can be made on a timely basis.

If companies have, due to their sound financing situation, the opportunity for recapitalisation, an externally financed special distribution to the shareholders is possible. This can be advisable in order, in the interest of risk spreading, to invest in other assets outside of the working capital.

If signs of temporary financing bottlenecks appear, thought must be given at once to structuring alternatives. An option for the widening of financing leeway, which we discuss with you and clarify in our consulting, can be the optimisation of the capital structure by means of systematic working capital measures.

The causes of liquidity crises can vary widely: a company has lost its main client, the bottom has dropped out of the market or a ruinous price war is being waged. It is important to counter such situations consciously and actively. Often radical changes are necessary to get the company back into the profit zone again. Particularly in such difficult situations it is important to be able to rely on an experienced and competent partner like PKF.

As profit is not synonymous with sufficient ability to make the necessary repayments for existing liabilities, the burden can under certain circumstances be permanently too high and the restructuring of the loans can become necessary. For this purpose, numerous tasks are to be performed. We support you with, among other things, the preparation of information for banks, with active liquidity management or with the revision of the business plan. Apart from that, we support you in talks with existing financing partners and help you in your search for new financing partners.

The variety of the individual processes makes it necessary for all of those concerned to make their contribution and, at the same time, for the various interests to be taken into account. We ensure transparent understanding of the situation, aiming at establishing a new financing structure which provides the company with sufficient room for manoeuvre again in order to be lastingly competitive.

During an acquisition process the analysis of the target company is focused on. One central question is whether and to what extent the strategic and operative objectives of acquisition can be achieved. The financing should be made a subject of discussion from the outset.

So that an acquisition project does not fail due to incorrect assumptions concerning the financing of the buying price, already at the time of the first approximate purchase price offer it should have been clarified whether the implementation of the provisionally planned external financing is realistic. Clarification entails the correct assessment of structures, times to maturity, margins or leverage. The appraisal of the feasible financing volume additionally permits an estimate of whether the approximate buying price is too high or too low. In that way the financing in the acquisition process is prevented from becoming the deal breaker.

Our experts in the area of acquisition financing support you with special know-how in the implementation of your financing project. We clarify all of the relevant issues together with you.

Decisive for the negotiation of the loan agreement documentation is that the financing fits the company during the whole term of the contract.