Covenant pressure
A test date is approaching and the headroom is thin.
Standing facts
- 08 engines · one evidence model
- 02 arenas · francophone Europe / Africa
- Entry from 2 minutes · free, no account needed
- Every engagement ends in a verdict , never a slide deck
- Fees anchored to value at stake · never consultant days
- Every instrument published blank · 33 rows in the public register
Engine 08 · Turnaround and recovery
Turnaround Reality & Recovery Twin™
Closed-loop enterprise stabilisation, restructuring, recovery and resilience decision system.
See the crisis. Protect the runway. Restore the business. Prevent relapse.
A business in decline does not need another dashboard. It needs a disciplined way to answer five questions quickly: what is really happening, how much time remains, what can still be saved, what must change now, and how recovery will be proven.
- Signal
- Reality
- Runway
- Viability
- Option
- Compact
- Execution
- Value
- Resilience
When to bring in the twin — while options still exist
Cash conversion breaking
Profit on paper, no cash in the account.
Confidence slipping
Lenders, suppliers or customers are shortening terms.
A plan already running
Initiatives are in flight and the benefits remain unproven.
The problem
Most turnarounds fail three times before they fail once.
Organisations act late, cut bluntly, and declare recovery early. Each failure is rational in isolation, and together they are the pattern.
- 01Late recognition
Decline is normalised as a temporary cycle until liquidity, creditors or customers impose the timetable.
- 02Wrong retrenchment
Cost actions protect short-term cash while damaging customer relevance, systems, maintenance or talent.
- 03Premature success
Refinancing, EBITDA improvement or an asset sale is treated as recovery before viability is proven.
- Survival is not success.
- Cash runway is not decision runway.
- Retrenchment is not recovery.
- AI cannot decide viability.
Signature · the distress-to-decision clock
Cash runway is not decision runway.
Cash may last twelve weeks. Lender consent, an asset disposal or a supplier standstill or formal process preparation each need their own lead time — and each must begin long before the cash runs out. The Twin reads the mismatch while the options still exist.
Week −8 — cash-out at week 12
SPECIMEN — ILLUSTRATIVE, NOT A REAL CLIENT ENGAGEMENT
Specimen · illustrative lead times. Not a client situation, shown to demonstrate the method.
OptionWeek −8 — cash-out at week 12
Supplier standstill
Needs 3 weeks · start by week 9
Open
Lender consent
Needs 8 weeks · start by week 4
Closing
Formal process preparation
Needs 10 weeks · start by week 2
Closing
Asset disposal
Needs 10 weeks · start by week −4
Closed
TodayWindow still openWindow already closed
Show the underlying numbers
| Item | Value |
|---|---|
| Supplier standstill | Needs 3 weeks · start by week 9 |
| Lender consent | Needs 8 weeks · start by week 4 |
| Formal process preparation | Needs 10 weeks · start by week 2 |
| Asset disposal | Needs 10 weeks · start by week −4 |
Read the asset-disposal row: its bar begins before today, which means the option was lost while the cash forecast still looked survivable. That is the failure the clock exists to prevent — a company can be solvent and out of choices at the same time.
The output
Seven postures. One is issued.
The Twin does not produce a recommendation, a score or a rating. It resolves the evidence to a single governed posture — and every step down the ladder costs you room to manoeuvre and adds someone whose consent you now need.
Posture
PostureRoom to manoeuvreWhose agreement it now needs
- 01Early intervention
Decline is visible; survival is not yet threatened.
All paths openManagement - 02Self-help turnaround
The business can stabilise alone, at the required speed.
Most paths openManagement and the board - 03Stakeholder-supported recovery
Viability exists, but it needs concessions or new money.
Narrowing…and lenders, suppliers - 04Balance-sheet restructuring
Operations may be viable; the capital structure is not.
Narrowing…and creditors - 05Strategic sale or partner
A buyer or partner preserves more value than going it alone.
Few paths open…and a buyer, shareholders - 06Formal process preparation
Court-supervised protection may become necessary.
Few paths open…and counsel, the court - 07Orderly wind-down
No viable perimeter exists. A controlled close protects more value.
One path left…and every stakeholder
Show the underlying numbers
| Item | Value |
|---|---|
| 01 Early intervention | All paths open |
| 02 Self-help turnaround | Most paths open |
| 03 Stakeholder-supported recovery | Narrowing |
| 04 Balance-sheet restructuring | Narrowing |
| 05 Strategic sale or partner | Few paths open |
| 06 Formal process preparation | Few paths open |
| 07 Orderly wind-down | One path left |
A posture is a verdict, not a label
It is issued into the decision record at a reversed constant — so the same evidence always resolves to the same posture, the conditions that would change it are written down, and the person who owned the decision is named. It can be wrong, and it can be audited.
The ladder is ordered, not scored. Descending it is not failure and climbing it is not success — the posture is simply what the evidence currently supports. Two of the seven end in a controlled exit, and publishing them is deliberate: an advisor whose only postures are recovery postures is selling the answer before the question.
The closed loop
The loop does not close at liquidity relief.
It closes only when the retained business is viable, recovery benefits are evidenced and relapse exposure is controlled. Seven operating environments run the chain, and each stage produces the evidence the next one needs.
- 01Early warning
Detect decline before formal distress.
- 02Crisis triage
Control liquidity, payments and stakeholders.
- 03Business reality
Test core perimeter and viability.
- 04Recovery architecture
Select recovery, restructuring or exit path.
- 05Execution command
Run initiatives, dependencies and benefits.
- 06Renewal
Authorise growth after stabilisation.
- 07Relapse prevention
Test resilience and reset governance.
Decision principle
Growth cannot be reauthorised before stabilisation conditions, the Recovery Investment Floor™ and stakeholder compact gates are satisfied.
The Recovery Investment Floor™
A floor beneath the cutting. It protects customer relevance, asset integrity, product capability, technology, compliance and critical talent — the assets that are cheap to cut and expensive to rebuild.
The truth place
Ten deterministic engines.
Each engine owns one authoritative question. They are deterministic by design: the same evidence produces the same posture, every time, and every output traces to its source, its version and its human owner.
- 01Distress Signal Engine
Detects deterioration across liquidity, margin, operations, customers, people, governance and stakeholder confidence.
- 02Crisis Clock & Runway Engine
Calculates cash runway, decision runway, critical payment windows and time-decaying optionality.
- 03Decline Causality Engine
Separates symptoms, root causes, amplifiers, contradictions and management-controlled feedback loops.
- 04Enterprise Viability Engine
Tests which perimeter, capital structure and operating configuration can sustain a viable enterprise.
- 05Recovery Options Engine
Compares self-help, restructuring, new money, disposal, partnership, sale and orderly wind-down paths.
- 06Stakeholder Support Engine
Models lender, shareholder, supplier, customer, employee, regulator and government support conditions.
- 07Recovery Initiative Engine
Authorises initiatives on cash, EBITDA, feasibility, timing, dependencies, owners and risks.
- 08Execution Momentum Engine
Determines whether implementation velocity is outpacing deterioration and whether benefits are realised.
- 09Renewal & Reauthorisation Engine
Tests when growth can restart and whether relapse exposure has been structurally reduced.
- 10Turnaround Replay & Learning Engine
Reconstructs missed signals, decisions, outcomes and transferable lessons without hindsight distortion.
Ten engines inside this twin — distinct from the firm's eight decision engines, which are the classes of decision we take on.
Signature IP
Six frameworks that change decisions.
Named so they can be argued with, and versioned so they can be wrong.
- Distress-to-Decision Clock™
How fast options are disappearing.
- Enterprise Viability Frontier™
Which perimeter can survive and earn cash.
- Recovery Momentum Curve™
Whether execution outpaces deterioration.
- Recovery Investment Floor™
The minimum investment that protects future viability.
- Relapse Exposure Map™
Whether the causes of decline remain.
- Turnaround Outcome Genome™
How cases become controlled learning.
Maturity rule · L2 — the gate set for this twin is still being written, so no gate count is published and independent evidence exists on request.
The boundary
What this product will not do.
A recovery system that quietly crosses into legal, insolvency or employment determinations is more dangerous than no system at all. The boundary is part of the product.
- No legal advice and no insolvency opinions.
- No automatic creditor negotiation.
- No autonomous workforce decisions.
- No AI-generated restructuring determinations.
Legal, tax, labour, insolvency and financing decisions remain with qualified professionals and authorised executives. The Twin sizes and sequences the decision; it does not take it.
The AI boundary
AI may explain, translate and draft narratives from signed outputs. AI cannot calculate or alter enterprise postures, runway, viability, stakeholder support, recovery benefit, legal escalation or certification status.
Where to start
Four entry points, by how much time is left.
Recovery mandates are not interchangeable. A company eight weeks from a covenant test needs a different first meeting from one that has already refinanced and cannot prove the recovery held.
- 01 · Entry point
Recovery Diagnostic™
Rapid decline, runway and viability assessment.
- 02 · Weeks
Crisis Command Mission™
Daily command function for urgent stabilisation.
- 03 · Full cycle
Full Recovery Twin™
Full recovery architecture and execution governance.
- 04 · Standing
Relapse Prevention Monitor™
Post-recovery surveillance and resilience validation.
The message
Recovery is not an EBITDA number. It is a business that will not need rescuing twice.
Bring us the decision you are closest to taking — the covenant conversation, the disposal, the cost programme, the refinancing. We will tell you which posture the evidence supports, and what would have to be true for it to change.
Arenas & Situations We Know
Family-owned groups·Founder-led companies·PE portfolio companies·Country subsidiaries·France · United Kingdom · Belgium · Luxembourg · Switzerland·Côte d'Ivoire · Senegal · Benin · Togo·Cameroon · Morocco · Guinea·Paris · Brussels · Geneva corridors
Evidence for your next high-stakes decision, starting with nine gates.
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