Business Recovery · Insolvency · Corporate Recovery
Business Recovery & Insolvency for Directors.
Your business is in trouble. The important thing now is understanding what options you still have.
You already know something isn't right. Cashflow has tightened. Pressure is increasing. You're carrying more questions than answers.
Most directors don't act immediately. Not because they don't care. Because they don't know what to do first.
For more than 26 years I've helped directors understand exactly where they stand, what their legal obligations are and, most importantly, what can still be done before valuable options disappear.
This isn't about selling insolvency. It's about helping you make the right decisions while you still have choices.
Over 26 years advising directors through financial difficulty.
If you know, you already know
If you know you're slipping, don't wait until you fall.
Every director recognises the warning signs long before anyone else does. The conversations you rehearse in the car. The payment you moved this month that you cannot move again next month. The meeting you postponed because you did not have a clean answer ready.
Delaying rarely improves the situation. Pressure compounds quietly. HMRC arrears grow. Personal guarantees start to matter. Wrongful trading exposure builds in the background whether anyone is watching or not.
Talking to someone early does not mean liquidation. Many businesses recover. Some restructure. Some close in an orderly, dignified way that protects the director and the people around them. The point of an early conversation is simple: understand which path applies to your business, while you still have the freedom to choose it, rather than have circumstances decide for you.
The central point
Pressure narrows perspective. Clarity restores it.
Distressed directors rarely lack intelligence. They lack clarity, because pressure changes the way people think. Options that would be obvious on a calm Tuesday become invisible at 3am on a Sunday.
My role is not to make decisions for you. It is to help you understand where you are, what your responsibilities as a director actually require of you, and which realistic options still exist. Then the decision is yours, made in daylight, rather than under the weight of the room.
"I don't make decisions for people. I help them see clearly enough to make better ones themselves."
How we work together
The Skiani approach, applied to the hardest room in the building.
I.
Discover
Understand the whole situation. The numbers, the people, the guarantees, the pressures behind the pressures.
II.
Diagnose
Name what is actually happening in plain English, so nothing is hidden and nothing is exaggerated.
III.
Design
Map the realistic routes: recovery, restructuring, orderly closure, and how each one affects you personally.
IV.
Implement
Move at the pace the situation genuinely requires, with the right specialists brought in where needed.
V.
Review
Keep looking at it, until the ground under you is steady again and the next chapter is properly underway.
Business Recovery
Preserving value wherever it can be preserved.
Recovery is not a single conversation. It is a sequence of decisions taken in the right order, with a clear view of what each one costs and what each one protects. The work most often includes:
Company rescue
Stabilising a business under pressure so it can trade on, on realistic terms.
Turnaround
Rebuilding the commercial engine, the cost base, and the management focus around what actually works.
Restructuring
Reshaping the business, its debts, or its ownership so the parts that are healthy can continue.
Cashflow analysis
Understanding, honestly, what the next thirteen weeks look like, and where the pressure points actually are.
Creditor negotiations
Handling the difficult conversations with suppliers, lenders, and other creditors, with the right tone and the right facts.
HMRC negotiations
Time to Pay arrangements, VAT and PAYE arrears, and the specific care HMRC exposure requires.
Director guidance
Personal clarity on duties, guarantees, and exposure, so you know what protects you and what does not.
Business recovery planning
A written plan you can act on, share with your accountant, and use to hold the room steady.
Insolvency & Corporate Recovery
When recovery is not the right route, an orderly path still exists.
Insolvency is a set of legal processes, each designed for a specific set of circumstances. Understanding which one fits, and what each one means for you as a director, is where most of the fear quietly falls away.
Administration
A formal process that pauses creditor pressure so a business can be rescued, restructured, or sold as a going concern.
Creditors' Voluntary Liquidation (CVL)
A director-led decision to close an insolvent company in an orderly way, protecting the director's position where possible.
Members' Voluntary Liquidation (MVL)
A solvent liquidation, typically used to close a healthy company tax-efficiently at the end of its useful life.
Compulsory Liquidation
Court-ordered liquidation, most often following an HMRC or creditor winding-up petition. An early conversation usually creates alternatives.
Wrongful Trading
Where directors continue to trade knowing the company cannot avoid insolvency. Understanding this early is what protects you personally.
Director Duties
Once insolvency is a real prospect, your legal duty shifts from shareholders to creditors. What that means, in practice.
Personal Guarantees
Where your own home, savings, or family assets sit inside the business's risk, and what can be done about it.
Director Responsibilities
Records, decisions, and communications. What you do now shapes what any future investigation looks like.
For accountants and professional advisers
A discreet, experienced route for the conversations that sit outside your remit.
You know your client is drifting. You have seen the numbers before they have said the word. You want to introduce them to someone who will hold the conversation properly, without theatrics, and without making you feel that you left it too late.
I work with accountants and professional advisers as an independent, experienced, discreet route for those specific conversations. You keep the relationship. I take the technical and emotional weight that sits outside your remit.
What that looks like
- Discretion. Your name stays out of it unless you want it in.
- Technical expertise. Founder of Bankruptcy.co.uk. Over two decades in these conversations.
- Commercial judgement. The right route for the client, not the loudest route in the market.
- Independent. Not tied to any insolvency practice or lender.
- Complex cases welcomed. Multi-entity groups, personal guarantees, family-owned businesses.
i.
The earlier we talk, the more options you usually have.
You don't need all the answers today. You simply need to understand where you stand. If your business is under pressure, let's have an honest conversation before circumstances reduce the choices available to you.