debt restructuring | Feature
Smith & Williamson S
eán McNamara is Director of Restructuring and Recovery at Smith & Williamson, a UK and Ireland based independent professional services firm. The company entered the Irish market in 2008 when it merged with Oliver Freaney & Co, an established Irish firm, and now ranks in the top ten accountancy firms in both the UK and Ireland. Having joined the firm in 2010, McNamara – along with Liam Dowdall, Director and Head of Restructuring and Recovery – set about establishing an insolvency team. “We're a team now of just shy of 20 and we do the full spectrum of insolvency work,” McNamara says. “There has been quite a lot of work around – that was obviously the motivation for them wanting to recruit us – but we have built up a strong team and we are enhancing our profile all the time.” The spectrum of services mentioned includes liquidations, examinerships and receiverships, as well as independent business reviews, business turnarounds and advisory services. As a director-led firm, clients of the Restructuring and Recovery team can expect input from two directors who have vast experience in their field. “We are a hands-on, director-led firm so Liam and myself put a lot of time into all of our jobs and we focus on work that requires more specialist insolvency skills,” McNamara says. “We have a broad experience base Liam has 30 plus years' experience and I have 15 years' experience in the insolvency sector. We have really seen every type of business, every type of insolvency process and every type of restructuring so that's what we bring to bear on things.” They believe there is no pre-determined solution for any case and that all cases benefit from senior analysis. “Each case is specific, each case requires a different approach and we come at things with an open mind,” McNamara says. “Some practitioners are taking on too much
Seán McNamara, Smith & Williamson
work and they can't service directly so they are pushing it down the line and they might not be getting enough senior time and senior experience into those jobs. We make sure that each and every job that we take on gets director time.”
Warning signs McNamara believes that many businesses get into difficulty as a result of the business owners being too close to the business and failing to recognise the warning signs. “Simple things like low morale, loss of key people or
not being able to quite get around to house-keeping issues like management accounts,” he says. “If you don't have management accounts you can't quite see how a business is doing and rather than seeing that you made a loss last month it might take you six months to see that you've actually incurred losses for the past six months.” While many business reviews are initiated by the banks, McNamara believes it is imperative for business owners to understand the importance of having “a fresh set of eyes looking at things” and says that owners should act as InBusiness | Q2 2013 31
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