How to Avoid Corporate Bankruptcy

And Still Get the Benefits Without the Expense, Lawyers, and Oversight

By: Neil Goldstein, Dan Goldstein

Narrated by: Pete Ferrand

Filing for bankruptcy can save a company, but it’s an onerous and unpredictable process. Bankruptcy costs a lot of money and time. Lawyers are required at every step and management needs to find new financing when the financing is frozen.

There’s a chance that the court may not approve the recovery plan or that a third-party management company can take over. Elementary Business has created an alternative to bankruptcy - the “Informal Plan”.

We’ve used it over 20 times to save companies in trouble. There’s no court, no trustee, no creditor committees, and far lower legal expenses. The Informal Plan also keeps management in control and focused on operations.

No mystery here, success can be achieved on a DIY (Do It Yourself) plan. This audiobook includes information on how to do it, what to say to creditors, and useful hints on how to offset difficult issues. It works!

©2017 Neil Goldstein and Dan Goldstein (P)2018 Neil Goldstein and Dan Goldstein

Might advance the thinking for the right audience

So, a firm is having money problems or maybe foresees having these problems. The answers do not seem to be comilng into view from sources inside the firm. If it is a large firm, it can hire a consulting firm like McKinsey to come in, look things over, and make recommendations. In that case, as is described here in a bankruptcy, there are neat fenced-off tasks for lawyers, accountants, a bankruptcy trustee (if it comes to that), all down the line. If it is a small-to-mid-size firm, without great sophistication in management or finance, this would seem to be the object of this book. Some of the sample firms described here seem like they could voluntarily make internal changes of a sort I would simply classify as basic "management." I.e., perhaps their management is out-of-touch or otherwise deficient. In any event, this perhaps smaller or somewhat less sophisticated firm needs ideas and answers, and has enough stress to be considering a bankruptcy filing. Creditors are pressing hard for payment and perhaps refusing further credit or shipments. Here come the authors to this book, to some extent marketing their sort of skills, (they claim) to give an alternative: why, say, pay $40,000 to various people in the bankruptcy process, that instead could go straight to vendors and others, and perhaps keep the business going, pending a workout achieved through voluntary agreements among all affected parties? So, this is not unlike the counseling (including,on bankruptcy alternatives) that an individual may (or must) seek on the path to an individual bankruptcy, nowadays. I can't vouch for (or meaningfully criticize) this book's and its authors' particular recommended setups. I remain with my natural skepticisms not all resolved. But yes, voluntary debt restructuring has always been an alternative for individuals or firms. There are,of course, complexities to this, and plenty can fail to go as hoped. Creditors not rigorously shown what is going on (as they are in a bankruptcy) may balk, for starters. And this, perhaps after a consulting fee has been paid. I do see the authors taking some time to explain SOME potential costs and benefits here.
There is some information about the workings of bankruptcy proceedings here, though (given these authors are promoting a certain approach they also, it would appear, sell) audible or some of its content providers could and should certainly provide books aimed specifically at this topic, and possibly more neutrally. The absence (as of this writing) of such a book on the nuts and bolts of business bankruptcy and restructuring is unfortunate, in my view. (So too, off topic, is the paucity of books on reverse mortgages.) In the face of such a gap, this book is just about all that is available on this site. It has some use, in that circumstance.

okay but not worth a book

Basically just says try to work things out with vendors and keep going, nothing interesting