TMA Europe

Friday 27 March 2015 | TMA Europe | www.tma-europe.org

TMA Europe's annual event focuses on Rebuilding after the Turnaround

The issue of when does a turnaround stop and the rebuild start will be debated by a panel of leading experts at TMA Europe's annual conference.

Highly-respected turnaround specialist Ian Gray, Managing Director of Baronsmead Consulting, will chair the panel at the conference in Stockholm on Friday, 12 June.

The theme for TMA's eighth annual conference is 'Rebuilding after the Turnaround' with the event focusing on the increasingly important role for turnaround given the current slow economic situation in Europe.

Mr Gray, who has extensive international experience of business recovery, will be joined by panellists J. Scott Victor, Managing Director of SSG Capital Advisers (USA); Henrik Engser, Independent Advisor at HEAB (Sweden); Maciej Woznica, Senior Portfolio Manager at Sparinvest (Denmark); and Gavin George, CEO of Alteri Investors (UK).

The debate will use a case study of a turnaround led by Mr Gray, which involved a distressed company where the entire management team was replaced in order to secure its survival.

Mr Gray, who is on the board of both TMA UK and the European Association of Certified Turnaround Professionals (EACTP), said: "What the panel will propose is that there is no point where the turnaround stops and the rebuild starts - it's a continuum.

"Although each case is different, the overall process is a continuous journey. Each time you look at the business, assess the options and identify what needs to happen. While the people may change the business continues - you fix it and then rebuild. And then you have to decide at what point to walk away and exit the business."

The annual TMA Europe conference has become one of the industry's leading events for turnaround professionals, with last year's event in Germany attended by more than 170 delegates from 14 different countries. It is the ideal opportunity for colleagues from across the continent to get together and share ideas and best practices, as well as learn about key developments in turnaround management.

This year's programme will also include panels featuring eminent turnaround and restructuring professionals discussing restructuring in Eastern Europe, financing a turnaround and where is best to restructure.

There will also be plenty of networking opportunities throughout the event as well as at the pre-conference banquet the night before.

Hotel room rates can be seen here. Please ensure you book your hotel early.

Early bird discount for the conference ends on 31 MARCH 2015.

For more information please email mcaruana@tma-europe.org or to book your place see the TMA Europe website.

Non-performing loan transactions in Central and Southern Europe will be debated by leading restructuring experts at TMA Europe's East European conference next month

The event, being held at the National Bank of Romania in Bucharest on Monday, 27th April, will see speeches and panels focusing on the economic environment in Eastern Europe.

The first panel of the evening will look at successful NPL transactions and service models in the CSE. It will be chaired by Marko Fabris, Senior Manager in the Advisory Services department at PwC SEE, who said he was keen to explore which countries in the region are most interesting from an NPL investment perspective and why.

"I believe all SEE countries have strong market potential for NPL transactions. Romania, for example, still has to deleverage more than €12bn of NPLs from the banking system, and the process of actively deleveraging non-performing loans in other SEE countries has only just begun. In Serbia, Croatia and Bulgaria, the process of cleaning up bank balance sheets will continue for at least the next three to five years, so this is a really important issue to cover."

Mr Fabris, who has more than 12 years of experience in assignments in Serbia and other South East European countries, added: "We will also be looking at what the main asset classes are in transactions across the region and why, particularly in light of the sharp increase in the number of corporate loan portfolio sales in Romania last year. I'd really like the panel to discuss the trends in other CSE countries, and to explore the reasons as to why these are different."

"Another major issue for the panel to discuss is the size of transactions we are seeing across the CEE region and the drivers for this. Again, we'll be looking at the reasons behind the differences in sizes and whether this is the result of regulatory disparities, the existence of more developed internal restructuring and remediation bank departments which are focussed on finding ways to solve problem loans, or a simple lack of interest from investors."

Mr Fabris will be joined by panellists Enrica Maria Ghia, of Studio Legale Ghia in Italy; Nick Colman, of KPMG in the UK; Oana Petrescu, of Deloitte in Romania; Bernd Mittermair, of BCR Bank in Romania; Florian Klimscha, of Freshfields in Austria; and Viktor Levkanič, of APS Holding SE in Romania.

The conference runs from 4.00pm until 8.00pm. It is free to attend, but pre-registration is essential. For full details and to register please see www.tma-europe.org .

TMA Europe's first Round Table debates the aftermath of AQR

Senior figures in financial services gathered in London for TMA Europe's groundbreaking Round Table event designed to debate and help shape key banking trends.

The aim of the new series of discussions is to bring together experts from a range of disciplines - including turnaround, bank financing, alternative capital financing, regulatory and legal - to jointly discuss topical issues. TMA believes that such cross-discipline debates will help to influence the way the sector develops and grows.

The topic for debate at the inaugural Round Table was turnaround in financial services and how London can continue to build opportunities in post-AQR Europe.