Our expertise: The pooling of experience, skills and energies to prevent, support, manage crisis situations and prepare for the future
“At O3 Partners, we believe in the importance of synergies and in the need to change mentalities as well as the support to assist companies, their managers and their stakeholders, in all stages of crisis management. But also to rebuild distended links with its partners, to analyze the situation objectively and to believe in the future.
It is in this respect that the pooling of legal, accounting and financial skills, as well as our life experiences, are levers to better understand situations in order to build the appropriate solutions to remedy them.”
Our firm brings together the expertise of a court-appointed administrator, lawyers and chartered accountants to assist and guide companies, managers and employees as well as their partners (suppliers, bankers, customers, etc.) faced with complex economic, financial, legal, organizational and human situations and wishing to preserve the future.
The Covid crisis has weakened the economic fabric and disrupted the activity of many companies: multinationals, ETIs, SMEs or VSEs.
Despite the “whatever it takes”, some of them have been confronted with inextricable economic and financial situations, forcing them to go through the painful passage of collective procedures.
This crisis is neither the first nor the last, but it has struck by its magnitude and global character.
Beyond the context of a crisis, a company can fall at any time, without having had the time to anticipate the risks, to think about the options and to foresee the solutions.
A death, a disabling illness, a retirement, an excessive staff renewal, or recruitment difficulties can lead to human and know-how deficits essential to the activity.
An inability to pass along the escalation of raw material prices to its customers or even a computer hacking can also upset the company’s balance.
A supplier that disappears, itself a potential victim of an erratic market, the domino effects of a globalized world such as a military invasion, unfavorable weather conditions and all the repercussions on household and business consumption lead to turbulence on the world’s financial markets. Shortages of raw materials and rising energy prices slow down a company’s activity and put the entire value chain (production, logistics, distribution, etc.) in difficulty.
As singular as they may be, the difficulties of companies with multiple causes often plunge their managers into a stressful situation sometimes accompanied by an inability to act which may prove to be dramatic in the very short term. The law forces the manager to find a solution to the difficulties he/she encounters within a short and rigid timeframe, which, if not respected, may result in his/her liability.
To make the right decisions, the manager will be assisted by his usual advisors, but given the particularity of this type of crisis and the risks involved, they may find it profitable to have at their disposal complementary skills, more specifically dedicated to the prevention and treatment of business difficulties. This multidisciplinary collaboration brings hindsight and speed of analysis, indispensable success factors when time is pressing…
To increase the company’s capacity to recover, this collaboration should be put in place as soon as the first symptoms appear.
Supporting a weakened company requires a broad reflection that asks the right questions to address all the legal, accounting, financial and organizational aspects and that considers the human resources of the structure, which are very often and logically overwhelmed by situations that are sometimes as brutal, unexpected and complex.
O3 Partners is totally involved on a daily basis with the manager and his teams, in collaboration with the usual advisors, to analyze, imagine, anticipate, propose, reject, and build a realistic and reasonably feasible strategic plan.
O3 Partners understands its role as an aggregator to make the right choice of solutions and take into account the interests of other constituencies.
No one knows the structure better than the head of the company. He knows what makes it fragile. On the other hand, his entrepreneurial dynamics can lead him to ignore or minimize the signals of weakness. The continuation of the business can then be questioned.
For endogenous causes
For exogenous causes
The consequences appear quickly and strain relations with suppliers, subcontractors, customers, employees, banks, etc.
They provoke the reaction of the creditors: visit of bailiffs, seizure, stop on the accounts… So many steps which traumatize the teams and make lose sleep to the manager who feels frighteningly alone in front of this undesired situation. The need to exchange, and particularly with competences complementary to those of his usual advisers, is generally quickly felt.
The constructive exchanges between O3 Partners’ associates and the company’s usual advisors allow us to develop a 360° diagnosis and to enlighten the manager on the tools at his disposal to provide the right answers to the company’s situation.
A perfect knowledge of the legal, accounting and judicial workings of a restructuring, whether amicable or judicial, allows O3 Partners to prepare the manager and his teams for situations which are foreign to them and which arise from a proven crisis and the possibility of a collective procedure.
O3 Partners takes into account and integrates the resilience and willingness of the manager and his teams to take a step back and imagine, explain and build options to exit the crisis.
Once the positive effects of its actions have been noted, O3 Partners does everything possible to ensure that the company returns to profitability and the sustainability of its model. The head of the company and his teams can regain their serenity, both within the company and in their family units.
The most common needs identified in the cases handled concern human resources. Employees react very differently to the crisis and, being sometimes unable to resist the stress, may leave the company.
A reassuring framework must be quickly put in place. This can be an operational management, transitional or not, a CFO, a legal intervention, an international consultant, a management controller… Thus, the manager can concentrate on his commercial development.
Our support is built on trusting and quality human relationships that allow us to address the judicial, legal and accounting issues of the company in crisis.
However, when organizational, marketing, technological, IT or HR issues weaken a structure, O3 Partners can turn to its network of partners to seek help and resources to promote synergies between the various departments of the company and external consultants.
Having identified solutions that respect the interests of all stakeholders, O3 Partners and its experts are able to renew the ties that the company has established with its employees and partners.
We use our diverse and complementary expertise to preserve business and jobs, while respecting the sometimes-conflicting interests of stakeholders. We want to protect the entrepreneurial capacity of the manager, his morale and that of his teams, his values, his know-how and their pride.
We know how to share our analysis and the resulting solutions with pedagogy and respect, and we can defend the chosen project before the stakeholders and the authorities who will judge its relevance.
Because we commit our joint signature to the project, this means that we must believe in its feasibility to convince the third parties involved.
There is always another way than the one doomed to failure.
Synergies within the reach of companies for the creation of sustainable solutions
Our synergies are born of a multidisciplinary mix of skills: court-appointed administrator, lawyers, and chartered accountants.
The fluidity of exchanges and the complementarity of expertise allow for a rapid understanding of concepts and economic models of companies in difficulty, which are sometimes complex in a market environment that is in full upheaval.
Because the legal, judicial and accounting vocabularies cover concepts that can be misunderstood, O3 Partners’ reports must be educational in order to ensure that everyone understands the issues at stake and the solutions proposed.
The merging of different professional skills allows us to provide the weakened company or the one in difficulty with:
The optimal valuation of assets to pay off liabilities in the best possible conditions is also part of the equation.
Whether the causes of the difficulties are related to the sector, raw materials, resources, the geopolitical situation or a legal context; whether the situation impacts the company or a subsidiary; whether it is French or international, O3 Partners knows how to confront the situation without delay in order to preserve the company’s components.
The national and international professional network of O3 Partners is regularly called upon in the context of restructuring operations of international groups involving a need for cooperation between professionals and/or jurisdictions.
The partners and associates exchange with the management and the core team involved in the turnaround. The ad hoc team is formed by the project manager around the needs of a company.
Having taken knowledge of the legal and accounting documentation, and after confronting the company’s reflections, O3 Partners establishes a diagnosis of the economic and financial health of the company and draws attention to the urgency of the decisions to be taken and the preparatory work to be done.
Partnerships built on mutual professional respect, with experts in the sectors explored, coupled with a perfect knowledge of the restructuring field, allows O3 Partners to anticipate and understand the challenges and specificities of each company.
Restructuring and the negotiations it entails often go beyond the national territory and require the assistance and skills of professionals outside our borders. Because its partners have been involved for 30 years in the work of the United Nations Commission, the World Bank and the EBRD, because they are members of GRIP 21, a think tank, and because they have been chosen as experts by Group V of the UNCITRAL, O3 Partners has a solid network of fellow lawyers, international chartered accountants, and specialists in the treatment of business difficulties, whom it is possible to call upon and place at the service of its clients and partners.
Once the paroxysmal state of the crisis has been dealt with, the company must continue its reflexion so that the awareness born from the uncompromising audit, imposed by the crisis, leads to as many decisions guaranteeing the continuity of the activity, the stability of its model and its profitability as well as the preservation of human resources. The partners of O3 Partners, who participated in the audit, will help in the prioritization of the objectives.
Founded at the end of 2020, O3 Partners is the first multi-professional company (SPE) for the professions of court appointed administrator, lawyers and chartered accountants. It extends its national competence with offices in Paris, Lyon, Nice, Poissy and Rueil-Malmaison. It has an important international network resulting from the participation of its partners for more than 30 years in the work of GRIP 21, an expert with Group V of the United Nations Commission. This SPE is registered on the national list maintained by the CNID AJ MJ (National Commission of Registration and Discipline of Court Appointed Administrators and Judicial Representatives), at the Paris Bar and at the Order of Chartered Accountants of Ile-de-France.
The SPE militates for the recognition of the right to professional failure without stigma for everyone in an unstable and complex economic and social environment and wants to make the principle of good faith the basis of the relationship between entrepreneurs encountering difficulties and the legal environment. Committed and united, the 8 partners wanted to display their raison d’être in the statutes. With their collaborators, they work enthusiastically to build a sustainable future for the companies they support by relying on what is their strength: their human capital.
At the initiative of Isabelle Didier and Michel Cibelly, O3 Partners is the concretization of a commitment of 8 associates convinced of the need to accompany companies and managers facing complex organizational, economic, financial, legal and human situations in a:
• More global way by including the human factor;
• Less anxiety-provoking way because more educational and preventive;
• More imaginative and evolutionary way to take into account the phases of doubt and uncertainty.
With the resources of more than 100 collaborators spread throughout the country and the total commitment of the 8 partners and the team strictly dedicated to prevention and business difficulties, managers can exchange, share their concerns and questions, and find a certain serenity to enable them to concentrate on production and commercial development, which is essential for the survival of the entity.
Isabelle Didier
Bruno Anger
Delphine Berthelot-Eiffel
Marc Chernet
Daniel Chriqui
Michel Cibelly
Agathe Landry
Jean-Michel Matt
• 67 boulevard Lannes 75116 Paris
• 3 avenue Beauséjour 92500 Rueil-Malmaison
• 63 rue du Général de Gaulle 78300 Poissy
• 16 Rue Cais de Pierlas, 06300 Nice
• 55 Bd des Brotteaux, 69006 Lyon
