The Opportunity

 EY’s Turnaround and Restructuring Strategy (TRS) team is one of the leading teams of its kind in the market, working with stressed and challenged businesses with a unique culture and position within the larger EY firm.  TRS is part of EY’s Strategy & Transactions business, working with companies and stakeholders at times of change, and often at an exciting pace. TRS covers a number of geographies across both South Africa and the wider continent, working closely with other EY teams, and you may have the opportunity to work across different teams in your career with TRS.

Our clients can be companies, government bodies or financial stakeholders like lenders or shareholders.  They might be on the brink of a crisis, or simply looking to build greater resilience into their business.  In TRS we work closely with our clients to deliver the financial and organisational solutions that enable them to adapt and succeed or minimise the downside risks that they are facing.  The work involves understanding the drivers of value in a business and problem solving to manage the priorities of competing stakeholders. People who flourish in TRS want to think broadly about what drives value in a company’s performance and the factors that can drive underperformance or failure.

TRS is a growing team seeing a significant uptick in its market during 2024 and beyond for financial advisory, so there is real opportunity to develop and grow your career.  Whilst we do work at pace at times, the team is a welcoming and inclusive place with a good balance of hybrid working and an enjoyable team environment, where you can bring your whole self to work.

Your Key Responsibilities

• As a Restructuring Senior Manager in out South African TRS practice, you’ll have a pivotal role in restructuring engagement by working closely with senor leadership to engagement to craft the scope, execute the analysis and draw conclusions, while also being a critical member of the team, providing coaching and insight to junior colleagues.
• You will get excellent exposure to our clients which consist of some of the world’s largest corporates, banks and development finance institutions and will benefit from being at the heart of shaping restructuring outcomes that preserve value and protect jobs.
• You will have the opportunity to demonstrate your relationship building skills and build your personal brand working alongside the leadership team to decide on the go-to-market strategy and meeting with clients in the marketplace.
• You will also develop a strong risk radar, helping the leadership team identify risks to independence and potential conflicts and making sure that the firm’s Quality and Risk Management Procedures are adhered to.
• You will help clients evaluate capital options, capture greater transaction value and achieve strategic objectives – whether they are buying or selling a distressed asset, restructuring a business, dealing with underperformance, or looking to improve cash management.
• Your analytical and report writing skills will be crucial in preparing comprehensive financial reviews of company’s operations and trading performance. As a Senior Manager you will play a key role in the team coaching more junior staff and helping ensure that they can build a fulfilling career at EY.

Skills and attributes for success

• Ability to lead financial analysis and scenario modelling to support decision making and awareness of the key drivers of corporate failure or underperformance.
• Commercial acumen –using knowledge and insight gained from client work and apply your understanding of the wider business environment.
• Able to identify key issues on assignments and suggest and help implement workable solutions.
• Experience in delivery of work products by presenting findings clearly in reports and other deliverables to clients.
• Ability to share technical and other knowledge with the team drawing on previous experience and current learning.
• Leverage existing relationships and build new ones to assist partners with generating new business opportunities and building relevant external networks and relationships.
• Proactively assess markets and corporates to help identify work winning opportunities.
• Demonstrate professionalism and confidence to deal with a range of stakeholder groups and management teams.
• Good project management skills, with the ability to manage more than one assignment at a time and yet still demonstrate quality and consistency of performance in every task.
• Adapt well to change and have a flexible and positive approach.
• Desire to support the people development of TRS – contributing to or leading training courses, recruitment, and team / wellbeing activities.
• Strong appreciation of risk management.

To qualify for the role, you must have:

• A bachelors or graduate degree.
• A minimum of five years of restructuring experience and a total of seven years relevant work experience (e.g. diligence, modelling, audit).
• Client facing experience from a professional services background and the ability to lead client conversations and meetings.
• Skills in financial analysis of a distressed business and reporting findings to stakeholders.
• Proficiency in MS Office tools including Excel and Powerpoint.
• Experience in designing and helping to implement restructuring solutions.
• Strong knowledge of finance agreement structures, covenants and terms.
• Excellent negotiation and communication skills to get buy-in to a restructuring plan.
• Appreciation of the risks inherent in advising distressed businesses and their stakeholders.

Ideally, you’ll also have

• Professional accountancy qualification.
• Own network of contacts with work providers, or will understand how to build one.
• Experience of South African insolvency regimes.
• Experience of using data analytics tools such as Power BI and Power query.