Act while the options are still confidential.
A French business in difficulty has confidential options, but only before things have gone too far, and they work best when someone with authority is already running the plan.
What a company in difficulty usually has to deal with
The pressures tend to arrive together:
Waiting too long
The confidential options, such as a mandat ad hoc, leave the owner in charge, but they narrow quickly once cash runs out.
Cash visible only a few days out
Nobody knows with any confidence where cash will stand in six weeks, so every decision is a bet.
Lenders and suppliers losing patience
Banks and long-standing suppliers want a plan they can believe, and the previous one did not hold.
The owner is too close to it
Which is no criticism. That is why an outside operator makes sense.
We match you with people who have seen a business through this situation before. They step into the role, bring cash back under control, redraw the plan and handle the talks with banks and suppliers that the owner cannot carry alone. The engagement steps down once the business is steady again.
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
How a turnaround brief runs
In a turnaround, the person matters more than the paperwork. We match for authority and calm under pressure.
Chosen for the crisis in front of you
We ask what is true today: cash, lenders, suppliers. The search is built on that, not on a job title.
Specialists when the plan needs them
Cash, lenders, people: the questions arrive at once, and the executive has peers to call on for each.
No restart if someone steps away
A recovery plan cannot pause for a new search, so we keep the plan and the brief to hand and manage any change of person ourselves.
Calm in French and in English
Lenders, staff and suppliers all need to hear the same plan, in the language each of them uses.
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 France provides operational and executive leadership support. Where a situation requires insolvency, legal, restructuring or regulated financial advice, we work alongside the appropriate specialist advisers.
