Hot off the Presses
Headlines about the trials and tribulations of Ford Motor company’s turnaround efforts and the recent speculation as to whether Yahoo has really embarked on a turnaround effort or is just shaking things up due to lagging financial and technological performance suggest that the need for intelligent approaches to turnaround management isn’t limited to one sector of the economy. VSB’s John A. Pearce II’s recent article on The Value of Corporate Financial Measures in Monitoring Downturn and Managing Turnaround: An Exploratory Study offers an interesting look at how financial ratios of liquidity, activity and leverage at each stage of the turnaround process may be reliable indicators of which firm’s efforts will meet with success. Managers can use this insight to ascertain which phase of a turnaround they are in and reinforces the need to focus on fundamentals as operating efficiency was found to be critical for the duration of the turnarounds sampled.