A white knight to the rescue

YOUR company is in trouble. Borrowing is out of control; the bank has

blown the whistle and called in the corporate rescue squad. Nee-naw,

nee-naw, they pull up outside the long-unpolished rubber tree plant in

your front hall. Out steps a big man, with wild eyebrows reaching to

heaven and the look of someone who means business. It is Sir Lewis

Robertson.

There is a good chance that you, if you are very senior in your

company, are not going to like what follows. Your dismissal will be

handled politely as well as speedily as Sir Lewis is installed as rescue

chairman of the company and sets about, single-handed and purposefully,

putting things right. There is also a good chance that deep down you

will agree with what he does and admit that somehow you could not manage

it yourself.

He probably won't stay long. This 69-year-old has a work schedule

which would exhaust a much younger squash-playing chief executive. He

soon will be off on an afternoon plane having left a rescue package. The

new managers will show up for work in the morning and likely find a

faxed missive sent late at night from Sir Lewis setting the day's

targets and checking up on yesterday's. Your company is now in the hands

of an extraordinary individual, a one-man Scottish business institution

who, without a university education and without completing his chartered

accountant's qualification, probably brings more accumulated corporate

wisdom to the job than a graduating class full of MBAs. Experience and a

mind which has never been allowed to retire make Robertson the doyen of

rescuers.

Finding him takes planning. He keeps his own diary, stretching three

months in advance, and must be one of the Edinburgh shuttle service to

London's best customers. We met at his home in Edinburgh's Stockbridge

after breakfast just before he was due to fly to the City. His secretary

works in a basement office while his office is on the top floor, a neat

dark green study with an enviable collection of dictionaries, reference

works and books on his favourite subject, history.

''Italian history mostly. I have a thing about Italy and we go there

two or three times a year.'' Robertson embraced computers at the age of

60 and deftly transfers files from his home-based PC to the laptop which

is his constant companion. He enters photography and list-making among

his interests. A reader of the business pages, he does not watch

television. ''I have never made room for it.''

You want to find out more: about the war when he worked with British

intelligence cracking the German's code, or his love of the music of

Richard Strauss. Public appointments and work in the arts and the

Episcopal Church take up a page and a half of his personal career

outline. But this is the man who has seen scores of companies in

trouble, so why do the company doctors, as they were known before they

were rescue men, get called in?

''It is often the banks and sometimes the shareholders who call in the

rescue operator and very often the trouble is borrowing which is

increasing. Cash control is not operating as it should or is going

adrift and the business is not making profits.

''You then find a whole string of things that have to be tackled.

Usually the fundamental issue is management structure and capability. At

the present time when we have weak markets and the economy is at a low

ebb even good managements find it very difficult to control the

situation because of the industry they happen to be in.''

Robertson finds that companies often find trouble in their

relationships with their bankers. Small companies keeping their

overdraft under control will probably not have to develop a deep

relationship with the bank.

He also finds problems with fair weather managers. ''You can have very

good people running a factory or building a small to medium-sized

business but it is different when coping with a really adverse period.

This can show that the chap who has done very well up to that point just

does not have the necessary skills to deal with a new and much tougher

situation.''

COMPANIES can also outgrow their managers. ''This is the time to take

a good look at things and deal the cards again. Then again, when someone

has left a new man may be put in, placing the company under strain so it

performs less well.''

Managers, especially those who have formed a company and developed it

over 10 to 20 years, can be too close to developments to view the

troubles objectively, he finds.

Enter the rescue specialist. Robertson has seven rescues behind him.

''They are all on their legs and all of their lenders have been paid.

But I must have been involved in or discussed an awful lot more, perhaps

80 or 90.''

The rescuers are the emergency service, brought in before a company

plunges into bankruptcy, when the need for action is too urgent to leave

to a detailed analysis and thick reports from management consultants.

''To my left are the receivers and to my right somewhere are the

management consultants, but they are some distance away.''

The new chairman, and Robertson insists on running the show once he is

called in, needs to find out facts: not easy if the MD and perhaps the

finance director have left.

Robertson is a good information gather. ''First thing, you must know

the facts about the business but not so many facts that might confuse.

After that you stem the flow of losses. There is a lot that has to be

done very quickly.''

The rescuer needs to restore morale among the staff if productivity is

to return. ''They have become increasingly uneasy as to the viability of

the concern and need to be encouraged. Customers need to be reassured

that the business is still there and can supply what they want, and the

banks need to be kept informed.

''In the slightly longer term you need to look at the product and its

markets to find out if the company has adapted to market change.''

Often Robertson finds a mismatch between capacity and demand --

usually there is too much capacity and unless the company can increase

its market share, cuts will have to be made.

He seldom encounters resistance or resentment at the top level. ''The

chances are they are all a bit shell shocked or punch drunk following

the events of the last few months. They need to be reassured and

uplifted and given some renewed confidence.''

Images of corporate virility vanish. Managers have suffered too much

to nurse smooth illusions of business grandeur.

Robertson's latest rescue is Stakis, the hotel and casinos group which

in 1991 called him in to replace Sir Reo Stakis after the previous

year's #30m profits were halved and the share price dived. He has

reduced head office staff by a third and put developments on ice. But

continued weak property prices have delayed his hopes of selling off the

casinos to bring in cash.

Under his belt already are Grampian Holdings, the transport to

electronics group; FH Lloyd in England, a steel castings and heavy

engineering company; Triplex, an iron and non-ferrous castings groups

south of the Border; Borthwicks, the international food processing

group; the Lilley construction group in Glasgow; and Havelock Europa,

the shopfitting manufacturers based in Fife.

Robertson, was born in Dundee and apprenticed at the accountants

office which was founded by his grandfather and which today is part of

Peat Marwick. But he cut this short and went into the family textile

business after his elder brother was killed in the war.

He was the first chief executive of the Scottish Development Agency

and the first chairman of Girobank Scotland, and he is a director of

Scottish Financial Enterprise which represents Scotland's finance

community.

He has helped turn corporate rescue into a profession as a co-founder

with four others of Postern, a group of specialists in corporate risk.

The organisation now has a full time director in London.