Nature has made up her mind that what cannot defend itself shall not be defended.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
Crises that can threaten the viability of a company can happen to small and medium-sized companies to multinationals and corporations without famous brands of any size and in every industry. While bankruptcy is a last resort for most companies in extreme financial distress, a much larger number of companies are struggling with strategic issues, results issues or liquidity issues and are battling the potential of becoming insolvent.
There are three phases of crises that lead to insolvency: strategy crises, earning crises and ultimately liquidity crises. Too often management is paralyzed by its past, in the form of unnecessary attachments, repetitions of tired formulas and hide-your-head-in-the-sand polices. VGH assists executives and senior management in breaking the chains of past mistakes to develop new structures and strategies addressing the present moment.
The earlier an impending crises is identified transparently and countermeasures enacted, the larger the available action radius and the higher the probability the corrective strategies designed will succeed. VGH believes that with the right guidance, companies in distressed situations can utilize corporate restructuring to turn a financial challenge into an opportunity to revitalize the business.
Our seasoned team has experience in assisting companies and executives in all three stages of crises. We draw upon a diverse range of practical business experience from a multitude of industries and disciplines spanning over 100 years collectively.
Strategy Crises Solutions
These options are available to clients on a limited and select basis determined primarily by the early detection of latent insolvency issue.
Capital Markets
The capital markets division focuses on two primary areas:
Advisory Services
Our capital markets division provides finance and capital markets advisory services to private companies and projects. This division specializes in financial engineering and is driven primarily by the needs of the private equity clients. These activities include, but are not limited to, merger and acquisition advisory, privatization advisory and balance sheet capitalization.
Bridge Funding / Sector Investments
Our capital markets division can be engaged in creating private bridge funding capacity for companies that require expansion capital. All bridge funding investments are planned with one to two year time horizons. The form of investment will be structured to provide defined priorities for investment capital. Preferred stock and convertible debt are the traditional forms of investment.
Private Equity and Principal Investment
Our private equity division achieves its investment objectives by acquiring lower middle market companies and the employing a hands-on operational approach to unlocking and growing value post close.
The strategy principally focuses on mature businesses that meet some or all of the following investment criteria: an established and loyal customer base, mission-critical products and/or services, recurring or predictable revenues, sizable market share, business to business relationships and underperformance due to strategic, operational, organizational and/or financial challenges. The firm does not focus on any particular industry, preferring to maintain a diversified portfolio of businesses.
Based upon the company’s business plan, it would be appropriate to structure a separate limited liability company for each investment made.