Navigator has worked through six crises in our region of operations since 1997:
- The Asian currency devaluations and their impact on Russia and the CIS (1998)
- The dot com bubble (1999-2000)
- The accounting scandals (2000-2001) of Enron, Worldcom, Tyco and others
- The financial crisis of 2008-2010
- The sovereign debt crisis (currently unfolding)
- The great real estate de-leveraging (currently unfolding).
Along the way, we have been called in to deal with any number of situations:
- In one situation in the former Soviet Union, our staff had to deal with the impact of unpaid salaries, when workers locked the management in an abandoned factory in an early version of “boss-napping”
- In another situation, we found that the CEO and shareholder of a firm was illegally profiting from his own company by declaring a 10% defect rate due to frost damage, while in fact he was exchanging the inventory for title deeds and cash for his personal benefit.
- In a third instance, we helped a leading multinational retain the mission-critical services of key sales staff and factory management, who were on the verge of defection due to an inappropriate corporate culture and missed signals from the European headquarters.
- In another situation, we helped a company deal with a vicious currency devaluation and gain physical access to hard currency to pay suppliers and staff.
- In the last 2 years, we implemented a crisis turn-around management plan for a company that lost 80% of its turnover due to the 2008 credit crisis and its impact on the specific economic segment our client was working in.
- In the last year, we helped evacuate client staff from a country in the midst of a violent political change and set up emergency recovery operations in a third country.
Luckily, things are rarely so drastic. Our typical crisis management assignments include defining and implementing a rapid corporate turn-around through focusing on reducing losses, re-gaining sales, and assuring profitability.
Our ability to work in a wide range of cultural and business environments while understanding the respective priorities and aspirations of different stakeholders and interest groups is an advantage. It enables us to go into difficult situations, gain the trust of various parties, do a rapid diagnosis, and define a clear and cohesive plan for recovery that can be accepted by all stakeholders.
