Helping clients restructure

Francesca Lagerberg from Grant Thornton International was recently in Malta to take part in a meeting of Grant Thornton CEOs from Europe which took place at the Corinthia San Gorg. Noel Grima met Ms Lagerberg and George Vella, Grant Thornton Malta partner

This meeting is of Grant Thornton CEOs from all over Europe and the network opportunities it offers are enormous.

Grant Thornton in Malta was founded, like other Grant Thornton outfits elsewhere, by a local person but it has experienced huge growth through its connection with Grant Thornton International.

It employs 100 people in Malta but there are also some 50 students who spend their summer holidays working at the company getting used to the company and its way of doing things. Through working at the company they would be turning what they would be learning at the university into concrete reality on the shopfloor.

Family businesses have their own challenges – how to change command and control structures beyond the second generation, succession planning, allowing new people in, letting go of something that is considered as a family heirloom, and allowing fresh money in, taking external advice.

Grant Thornton excels in this field. A Grant Thornton employee handles each company in a very personal way, so clients get used to the advisor and call him as the first point of call. Some clients need a lot of hand-holding, you have to be there for them in their time of need. There would be rocky times and the Grant Thornton advisor must prioritise authenticity, being yourself, helping the client grow, finding the successful recipe to survive and grow, become relevant.

There is general volatility around the Eurozone but Malta seems better placed to withstand stresses. Brexit can be a challenge but then Malta has ridden through quite stressful challenges in the past, especially the financial crisis, and then the Libya crisis.

On the other hand, the opportunities for Malta are great.

Grant Thornton is present in 140 countries, making it a big global network. It offers a wide range of accounting services, advisory tax, outsourcing etc. Its global revenue is $4.7 billion and its operations are focused in regions. It advises on business strategy and offers a range of advisory services in tax or other areas.

In Malta it has embraced the issue of Prospects, the junior arm of the Malta Stock Exchange. Grant Thornton is an accredited adviser and it is called upon to advise companies on restructuring.

One of its recent milestones was achieved recently when its first client was admitted to Prospects. This involved the restructuring of a whole group, a traditional company in Malta involved in retail, fashion, confectionery, catering etc and as part of this restructuring it intends to raise €5 million through Prospects to fuel its acquisition strategy and help it face the challenges it meets.

This is only one of the challenges the company faces in this line of business. When companies go through a restructuring process many times they need cash. Prospects has given companies the opportunity to raise cash where traditional banks would not be ready to come up with cash in such circumstances.

Other companies could be in the midst of a generational changeover, handing over the business from one generation to another. Some companies have quite complex difficulties and this requires from the Grant Thornton advisors some high diplomatic skills.

On the global level, Grant Thornton is involved in helping companies enter or leave jurisdictions, especially now with Brexit, helping companies work out what is the best way forward and where they want to be and where they want to leave.

No one has the gift of foresight. With regards to the UK the coming two years will be very difficult to foresee. The same goes for Europe.

On the other hand, however, Brexit can be a real opportunity for Malta. It has positioned itself very well with a favourable tax regime, it has a stable government, there is regulation but the processing of applications is quite fluid. There is a strong relationship between the regulator and the companies in the field.

Every jurisdiction presents itself as having the best offer and a history of working well with companies. Malta has a history of a stable environment.

Nobody can really foresee the future. The World Economic Forum has been speaking of 10% of cars being driverless by 2025, Blockchain will be all the rage and an artificial intelligent being may sit on a board of companies. All this can revolutionise companies worldwide, while there is a concern that traditional jobs will disappear. This may be the second industrial revolution.

Blockchain is quite disruptive, just as email was in its time. It may even replace the world capital market: it is immediate and carries with it huge opportunities.

The government of Malta has already said it has prepared the ground for Blockchain and in this regard, size does not count for anything.

Other countries show the way: Spain had a high unemployment rate but then it focused on Blockchain and is doing wonders. The same may be said of Estonia, another small country.

In Asia, a lot of discussion is about trade agreements and some of the big countries there are now beginning to look outside themselves and invest elsewhere, such as the New Silk Route from China to Europe

There is a huge emergence of young forces while Europe comes across as an old rather tired continent. There is also, of course, an unpredictability about what will happen to the US.

More protectionism can be a threat because talk about protectionism can be heard in the US, the UK and the Netherlands. Today, however, companies are very agile and very well connected and so there is hardly any company that is completely isolated. A small company starting up today would be looking outside its country far earlier than it used to do before.

There is always the need for talent, and Malta’s place in the Eurozone, its presidency of the EU Council is a fascinating opportunity.

Grant Thornton in Malta is predominantly an SME-focused company. It began in 1975 and still retains companies as clients from those early days, seeing them develop over all those years. Some have really grown and the company still services them.

Grant Thornton has embraced the international model: it thus offers its employees all kinds of possibilities of moving out of Malta and work elsewhere and this gives them a very wide outlook.

Grant Thornton employees working outside Malta find the move quite seamless. In this way, when they come back to Malta, they can offer clients a broader advice and in case of need, they always know of somebody who can give advice.