HIDDEN OPTIONS - When the Doors Begin to Close: A Practitioner's Field Manual for Distressed Companies, Turnarounds, Restructuring, and Wind-Down (THE HIDDEN SERIES Source-of-Truth Reference Book 4)

Most CEOs and boards facing distress believe they have two options: turn the company around, or file bankruptcy. They spend months trapped between those poles — hoping for the first, dreading the second — while the real options quietly expire. There are not two options. There are eleven. In Hidden Options, veteran CFO and chief restructuring officer David H. Tolly maps the doors in the order they close: lender forbearance, rescue financing, the out-of-court restructuring, Chapter 11, Subchapter V for smaller companies, the 363 sale, receivership, Article 9 foreclosure, assignment for the benefit of creditors, Chapter 7 — and the quiet close. Each door gets the operator’s treatment: what it costs, how long it takes, who controls it, what it does to the people involved, and when it expires — because the doors close in order, and the order is not negotiable. Around the doors, the book builds the full field manual: the eight early-warning signals that appear six to nine months before the crisis, and why CFOs miss them; the 14-day diagnostic that tells a board which doors are actually still open; what lenders, receivers, trustees, and distressed buyers want; the state-law and out-of-court alternatives most advisors never present; the personal-liability map — trust-fund taxes, guarantees, WARN, preference exposure — and the conversations nobody scripts; a buy-side chapter for acquirers shopping the distressed market; and the door-selection scorecard for the board meeting where the decision gets made. Tolly has carried twelve distressed engagements through to their endings — forbearances, restructurings, Chapter 11, receiverships, assignments, and wind-downs — including the ones that did not end well, and he writes about those too. Written for CEOs, boards, private-equity sponsors, lenders, and the CFOs of companies from $14M to $600M in revenue, Hidden Options is the map nobody hands you until it is too late. Read it before you need it. The preparation compounds. The panic does not. Read more