Alex Nowak Associate Director - Restructuring Services
Having joined and trained with the firm as a graduate, Alex has over 20 years of corporate advisory experience. A Chartered Accountant, Alex has previously worked in our Audit & assurance team and undertaken due diligence and capital market assignments as part of the Transaction Services team, before joining the Restructuring Services team.
Alex has extensive knowledge of financial, commercial, and strategic aspects on a variety of special investigatory, restructuring and insolvency assignments. He has particular expertise in advising lenders and other stakeholders during times of challenge and has extensive experience in undertaking Independent Business Reviews, Option Reviews, and Pre-lending Reviews.
Alex completed a secondment to a major UK bank where he managed a portfolio of recovery cases, considering restitution realisation strategies and minimising the bank’s exposure. The experience provided an invaluable insight into bank policies, requirements, and procedures.
Alex has significant advisory experience across all aspects of restructuring in a wide variety of sectors, including further education, manufacturing, property, and not-for-profit organisations. Separate to restructuring advisory projects, Alex has extensive experience of advising both Trustees and Employers of defined benefit pension schemes in assessing employer covenants, particularly during corporate transformations or periods of economic and financial uncertainty.
Selected projects include:
• Further education – multi-phase Independent Business Review, options appraisal and restructuring support for a specialist college ahead of a proposed merger.
• Leisure & tourism – Options Review of a prominent regional heritage museum during the COVID-19 pandemic leading to a major debt restructuring by stakeholders and forming the basis of a credible lockdown exit plan.
• Marketing & distribution – Options Review an international distributor of luxury Fairtrade chocolate products, including advising the board on an accelerated merger and acquisition process.
• Education & training - Independent Business Review of an EdTech company initially rejected by the Bank for an additional CBILS facility.
• Engineering – Options Review of an AIM-quoted group to evaluate and assess potential exit strategies, both solvent and insolvent, of disposing of a subsidiary engineering business in the Oil & Gas sector. Designing and implementing an orderly wind-down strategy encompassing contingency planning, critical cash flow forecasting, and monitoring.
• Communications – Options Review and time-critical contingency planning for a leading advertising and communications kiosk provider and supporting negotiations with its secured lenders and other major stakeholders.
• Charity - working with the Charity Commission on a number of complex Interim Manager appointments. One assignment involved investigating loan transactions with over 100 related entities, bankrupting a former trustee, and restructuring the charity to a sufficient extent to allow the appointment of new independent trustees.