The Conditions for Success

Why, in certain cases, is this solution applied and why is it successful?

For over 20 years, In Altum Consulting’s founders carried out a series of missions on behalf of a leading HR consulting firm focused on restructuring issues. These assignments, which involved the search for buyers, were remarkable both in their duration (3 months to 2 years) and complexity (the division of one site into two distinct entities), the sale of several sites in different countries in Europe, the number of jobs saved, i.e. from 50 to 500…

Too many takeover projects have been carried out blindly, without distinction, with unscrupulous buyers, “bounty hunters”, who were more interested in the subsidies they could get than in the real value presented by a responsible industrial project… and who offered no guarantee of long-term sustainability.

In each of these cases, the success of the project was based on:
- The trust our customers placed in the advice that was given. Because most often, it is the people at the corporate headquarters that must be won over. Together, with local teams, we draw up an estimate of the cost of the different scenarios as well as the timeframe of their implementation.
- Our unshakeable determination to try to come up with a solution that we feel is lasting and sure. Because we are convinced that what is most important for our customers, for the employees, and for us, is not the impact of the announcement, but the sustainable and reliable solution that is implemented. This is the reason why the takeover project study that we give our customers is guided, first and foremost, by the quality of the industrial project (or R&D unit, depending on the case) of the buyer.
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- We have always tried to strike a fair balance between employee expectations and our customers’ goals. When only solutions involving partial divestment are required, we recommend them rather than encouraging full takeovers that are bound to fail either because they do not ensure economic balance or because the industrial projects are unsuitable to the size of the units to be bought out.
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In short, we recommend that you:
- Prepare for the divestment well upstream…before it’s too late;
- Study the possible scenarios and their costs in order to ensure that the solution proposed is neither more costly nor more time-consuming to set up than a simple closure of the site with the lay-offs that go with it.
- Assess the sites beforehand – with complete confidentiality – to find out exactly under which conditions of cost and timing a sale, rather than a closure, could be achieved.
- Not to mention, of course, the setting up of a project team in which the corporate management is included…