The diagnosis is done. Someone has to act on it.
The owner knows what is wrong. What the company lacks is a senior operator with the authority to act, and it lacks one this month.
What a company in trouble is up against
Rarely a single problem. Usually several together:
Cash runs out before the plan does
The forecast runs months out and the bank checks this week.
The bank is losing patience
Lenders ask for reporting the company cannot produce yet, and each late number costs trust.
Costs are hard to take out
Permanent contracts are slow and costly to end, so a cost plan needs sequencing and honest conversations, not announcements.
Too close to the business
The founder built the business and finds it hard to cut parts of it.
An experienced operator comes in for a defined stretch, with a clear mandate and a few things to fix first. First they steady the cash position, then rebuild the reporting the bank expects and settle the plan with the owner. When the company is steady, they hand it on.
Who this is for, and who it is not
Best for
- A cash crisis that needs visibility and control now
- A business in operational or financial distress
- Lender or investor pressure that needs a credible plan
- A leadership vacuum that has stalled key decisions
- Stabilising the business before planning recovery
Not for
- A business that only needs advice or a written report
- A situation whose primary need is a formal insolvency practitioner
- A stable business planning improvements at its own pace
- A one-off review with no mandate to act
Support around a hard mandate
In a turnaround the operator carries the decisions and the pressure. We carry the governance around them until the business is steady.
Closer contact under pressure
We speak with you and the operator more often in a turnaround, and raise any gap between the cash plan and reality at once.
People who have sat with the bank
Your operator can talk lender negotiations, cost programmes and supplier standstills through with colleagues in our collective of 800+.
No pause if the leader changes
If the operator has to leave mid-recovery, we search again with the cash plan and the lender history on file, and lead the handover ourselves.
Matched for the pressure
We match on situation and temperament: calm with the bank, straight with the staff, firm with the owner.
The turnaround engagement
Each engagement moves from crisis to recovery with structured urgency.
Rapid assessment (week 1)
Financial position, operational status, commercial pipeline and team capability, mapped with a structured diagnostic framework.
Priority triage (week 2)
The 3–5 interventions that will have the most impact on stabilisation are identified and begun. Ruthless prioritisation.
Stabilisation (weeks 3–8)
Cash flow is visible and managed. Acute operational failures resolved. Lenders or investors briefed with a credible recovery narrative.
Recovery (month 2 onwards)
Processes rebuilt. Commercial momentum recovered. Financial infrastructure strengthened. Business guided from crisis to sustainable operation.
Turnaround triage
The leadership a situation calls for depends on where the business is breaking.
The roles a turnaround usually calls for.
For a complex turnaround, we can deploy more than one operator at once and layer in further specialists as recovery progresses.
Restructuring experience from
The questions buyers ask first
Fractional Netherlands provides operational and executive leadership support. Where a situation requires insolvency, legal, restructuring or regulated financial advice, we work alongside the appropriate specialist advisers.
