When the numbers turn, someone has to hold the line.
The first weeks decide a turnaround, on cash and on credibility. A report on its own rarely changes either.
What makes a turnaround hard
In a Swiss company under strain, the same things get in the way:
Lenders compare notes
A bank, a leasing company and a landlord each ask for the same plan, in different forms.
The debt register is visible
An entry in the debt-collection register, open to anyone with a reason to ask, changes how suppliers and lenders treat you.
The owner cannot be the one to cut
Long relationships make hard decisions slow.
Cuts cost more than they seem
Reducing headcount triggers costs that are easy to underestimate.
An operator who has led a recovery takes the seat. They get cash under control, give lenders one plan and one name, and give the owner a second pair of hands. Once the business is steady the mandate ends.
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
Support around a hard brief
In a turnaround the operator carries the decisions. We carry the governance around them until the company is steady again.
More contact under strain
Our contact with you and the operator is closer during a recovery, and a shortfall against the cash plan is raised the day we see it.
Experience with lenders
Bank talks, cost programmes and supplier arrangements are familiar ground to colleagues in our collective of 800+, and your operator can call on them.
No gap if the leader changes
Should the operator need to leave before the recovery is done, the cash plan and lender history we hold go straight into a new search, and we lead the handover.
Matched for strain
We match for calm under pressure: steady with the bank, plain with the staff, firm with the owner.
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 Zurich provides operational and executive leadership support. Where a situation requires insolvency, legal, restructuring or regulated financial advice, we work alongside the appropriate specialist advisers.
