Having creditors is a necessary element of business. But those lines of credit extended to your business do not come without some reciprocal obligations. Respecting your creditors should always be a priority. It is vital that you maintain a strong creditor-debtor relationship, even as situations change and become more difficult.
Be careful who you hire to help you with your problems and make sure they share the same commitment to your business as you do!
The reality for small businesses in financial strife is that turnaround consultants do not want to turn your business around.
Starting a business can be a mystifying process. It involves overcoming complex and seemingly never-ending challenges that can be frustrating to navigate and sometimes will not lead to a quick return. As such, when considering whether to begin such a difficult undertaking, it is immensely important to clarify some of the ideas surrounding starting a business.
Sometimes, no matter what a director has done to try and avoid a liquidation, it will loom on the horizon as the only option when a business is no longer viable. There is nothing left to do but to get out of the building before it sinks into an oozing puddle. But in that situation, directors still need to know: what things should they take on the way out or avoid doing?
The terms ‘liquidation’ and ‘winding up’, just like the terms ‘bankruptcy’, ‘tax office’ and ‘new season of Married at First Sight’, carry a degree of anxiety. But they shouldn’t. Liquidation, or the ‘winding up’ of a company, can happen for many different reasons: it does not necessarily mean that the business is broken beyond repair.
It has been evident for a long time that Australia’s ‘one-size-fits-all’ liquidation model is inappropriate for SMEs. This inadequacy has become particularly evident in the wake of the COVID-19 related economic turbulence.
The safe harbour is a carve-out to the duty of company directors to cease trading when a company is insolvent. It is a pro-business mechanism that helps companies stay afloat by giving directors protection from prosecution for insolvent trading while they work on a restructure. Read our guide to the safe harbour to find out more about this potential lifeline for insolvent companies.
A zombie company is a business that barely scrapes by and is always short of cash. The problem with zombie companies is that they can be easily tipped over the edge into insolvency when something goes wrong. Read our article to learn more about the signs, symptoms and consequences of zombie companies.
The prohibition against insolvent trading is a duty of all company directors to prevent their company from trading (i.e. incurring debts) while insolvent. It is illegal for a director of a company to allow an insolvent company to continue to trade, while having reasonable grounds for suspecting insolvency. The consequences can be serious: read our guide to find out more.
A trading trust is a trust over goodwill and business assets with the trustee being the legal person responsible to creditors. A trading trust is usually a discretionary trust whose trustee is a company, that is used to trade for the benefit of the beneficiaries. As with a non-trading trust, a trading trust separates legal ownership of assets from beneficial ownership and control. The controllers of the business are the owners and their family who exercise a controlling mind through their appointment as directors of the trustee company.
The Government is using its currently massive political capital to push through a revolution in SME insolvency law in Australia. Their aim is to make the insolvency process less draconian for small businesses and, in the long term, encourage a more entrepreneurial culture. The changes foreshadow streamlined and genuine debt forgiveness outside of voluntary administration.
In recent years, there has been a real ‘gold rush’ for cryptocurrency. And while cryptocurrency needs to be ‘mined’, just like the real stuff, it is much easier to transport and, potentially, keep secure.