Perspectives on business rescue, bankability, infrastructure finance, corporate restructuring, and strategic futures.
PESTLE analysis is the most misused tool in strategic planning. Done well, it changes decisions. Done badly, it produces a generic list of trends that sits in an appendix and is never read again. What separates the two.
Cost-benefit analysis is the discipline that separates infrastructure investment from infrastructure spending. What distinguishes a defensible CBA from a decorative one, how National Treasury's BFI framework treats CBA, and what a CBA that will survive review looks like.
Business rescue practitioner remuneration follows a gazetted tariff, unless a court adjusts it on application. The mechanics matter to creditors because practitioner fees are a preferred claim under section 143. A short guide to how fees are set, contested, and communicated.
Scenario planning at the provincial planning-team level is not the boardroom version of the exercise. The audience is different, the outputs are different, and the workshop shape has to be different. A practical two-day format that produces artefacts a provincial team can actually use.
Every project has a positive NPV at some discount rate. Every project has an IRR. Every socio-economic evaluation has a BCR. The three metrics answer different questions, and picking the wrong one produces a defensible-looking analysis that leads to the wrong decision.
Every distressed company reaches for one or both of two levers. Operational turnaround fixes the business; financial restructuring fixes the balance sheet. Knowing which is primary changes the sequence, the counterparties, and the outcome.
The first meeting of creditors under section 147 is not the plan meeting. It is the practitioner's first formal appearance, and it sets the tone for every negotiation that follows. What creditors expect, what the practitioner should and should not commit to, and how the advisor team prepares.
Formal warning arrives late. By the time the bank flags a covenant issue or the auditor raises a going-concern note, the business has been drifting for months. Five pre-covenant signals a business owner can watch for themselves.
A distressed but solvent company can be restructured or sold. Boards under pressure often reach for the sale because it looks decisive. The math sometimes says the restructure returns more to shareholders. When to reach for which.
The debt service coverage ratio is the single number most lenders look at first. What it measures, how it hides trouble, what covenant thresholds actually mean in practice, and why the average across a period is often the wrong view.