What directors can do with the time they have right now
The Twilight Zone was an innovative and groundbreaking TV science fiction and mystery series made in the 1950s and 60s.
It’s been rebooted several times but some of its most famous episodes have been updated and parodied so much that they become part of the general culture.
So much so that the original moral of these stories tends to get washed out and forgotten in the retelling.
One great example of this is the story of “a kind of stopwatch” that was remade as a film called Clockstoppers and as a part of The Simpson’s Treehouse of Horror halloween specials.
Both in the original and in the Simpsons version – a man or Bart and Milhouse acquire a stopwatch with one unusual extra feature – it can be used to stop time itself.
Like previous owners, they misuse the power, it breaks and while they ultimately repair it they remain marooned in time for several years.
The moral is that while it might be nice to stop time, it can’t be done permanently and time eventually moves on and catches up with us.
But what if you could pause time for long enough to give you space to work on ways to improve the financial outlook for your company or that could stop or freeze creditors actions while you arrange advice and assistance so that when they restart, your business would be in a stronger position to engage with them?
An Insolvency Moratorium might be the answer you’ve been looking for.
It allows businesses to have an enclosed legal breathing space away from creditors’ recovery actions like winding up petitions or bailiff visits while a recovery plan is formed.
This will restructure the company’s debts and give creditors more chance of ultimately being repaid rather than seeing the company go into liquidation with the increased risk of not receiving repayment.
When first granted, an insolvency moratorium automatically lasts for 20 working days.
This can be subsequently extended for another 20 business days if required with more extensions available for complex cases and only with the consent of creditors themselves.
An insolvency moratorium is different from administration or a creditors voluntary liquidation (CVL) in several ways.
The company directors remain in control of the business and continue to run it on a day to day basis but a monitor is appointed to make sure that all conditions are being adhered to.
Of course the business also has to keep on paying any rent, employment entitlements or any liabilities that come from financial service contracts and the monitor’s fees and expenses – although this is agreed in advance.
What happens when a moratorium ends and time restarts?
Depending on various factors there are several ways an insolvency moratorium can be resolved.
- New investment and borrowing
The business raises new funds and investment from shareholders or directors own funds, or it could include a business loan secured with the aim of consolidating existing company debts into manageable payments.
- Company Voluntary Arrangement
A CVA is arranged with the creditors approval and the business continues trading and making regular monthly payments to creditors in return for being allowed to continue to trade and a proportion of existing debt being wiped.
- Payment plans
Preferably after taking professional advice, the directors or business owner reach an informal payment plan with their creditors to begin paying down the debt. Additionally, if tax arrears are owed then a formal Time to Pay arrangement could be reached with HMRC. Missing repayments for both could have serious consequences so should only be entered into carefully.
- Insolvency – administration or liquidation
Sadly not every business can be saved even with an insolvency moratorium. If the debt and other issues prove to be insurmountable then the moratorium is ended and the business enters administration or liquidation.
“If you knew time as well as I do, you wouldn’t talk about wasting it” – Alice through the looking glass
Rules are changing at the end of September for winding up petitions and several other instruments including the final end of the furlough scheme.
The end of the year is in sight and the remaining weeks and months should be spent trying to regain momentum and build up to the best Christmas trading period for at least two years.
But what if you’re struggling with deciding which repayments to miss or trying to raise enough liquidity to make the minimum costs needed to avoid running up arrears for bounce back loans or other borrowing?
Even before thinking about an insolvency moratorium or other procedure, you should get in touch with us.
We offer a free initial consultation for any director or business owner who needs some impartial, expert advice on what they can do to help get their business back in shape for a hectic end-of-year period.
You could have more options than you think and if you’ve acted quickly, could even start to implement them and see results very soon.
However time will continue to tick by and if you don’t use it wisely then you could still have the same or worse difficulties later but without the time to fix them.
Which not even a magic stopwatch could help you with.