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All Articles by Bruce Werner
About Bruce Werner
Bruce Werner is the Managing Director of Kona Advisors LLC and served as an outside director on private company boards for the last three decades. Kona Advisors LLC provides advisory services to the owners, investors and CEOs of private and family-owned businesses. With deep experience in governance, succession planning, finance, strategy and management issues, Kona Advisors brings a broad perspective to developing solutions for its clients.
Can Seeking Help from the Lender Fix Distressed Companies’ Woes?
Turnaround Financing: How to Secure a Borrower Recently, bad practices caused a client’s accounts receivable to get extended well past 90 days. In fact, the client had 20% of its receivables dated further back than 120 days. Company staff knew that much of that would prove to be uncollectible, but no one really knew the […] Read More
Without Good Governance, Family Businesses Go Nuclear
3 Case Studies on the Importance of Good Governance To put it bluntly, proper governance does not come naturally for most private and family businesses. It requires leadership to understand that good governance protects the business, and is worth the sometimes substantial time and effort required to achieve it. Families will never be perfect. Which […] Read More
Lessons on Family Governance in Business
The Cornell/Loyola Family Business Roundtable brought together thought leaders to discuss business and family governance. Here are the key takeaways. Read More
Don’t Wait to Sell the Company
A business owner refused to sell the company amidst a changing market and growing debt. Here’s why waiting too long to sell hurt his business exit. Read More
An Alternative Exit Strategy for Distressed Business Owners
What happens when a family business with debt and no exit strategy faces a crisis? Read about their alternative solution: a distressed debt investor. Read More
Acquisitions: That Company May Be Good to Own, but Tough to Buy
Inaction Dissatisfaction is Preferable to Buyer’s Remorse At a client’s recent board meeting we were evaluating making a bid on a rival business worth $100 million. Our management had spent years positioning itself for the opportunity to obtain this business, and now that acquisition was finally upon us. Even though it was an extremely large […] Read More
3 Advisory Board Styles to Fit Every Business
Advisory Board Roles and Responsibilities for Any Stage of Business The boards of directors of for-profit and non-profit organizations have the same fiduciary responsibilities: duty of care, duty of loyalty and duty of good faith. While similar to fiduciary boards, advisory boards are not the same. The purpose and function of a board of advisors […] Read More
Creating a Risk Management System
Identifying and Managing Risks to Your Business Make It Stronger Most business owners are so busy running their business that they don’t have time to think about unlikely events. How can you think about possible “black swan” events when you are struggling with today’s problems? To protect shareholders, boards and management need to make time to think about […] Read More
An Experienced Executive May Make an Effective Board Member
What Makes a Successful Board Member? [Editor’s Note: if you are an experienced CEO, CFO or another executive, you may be thinking about putting your hat in the ring to be a director of another company. Or, perhaps you are the owner or a board member of a company looking for an outside director. Either […] Read More
Family Governance is Not Business Governance
Family Businesses Need Strategies to Govern Both the Family and the Business Family businesses are unique and the way they are run differs from family to family. Each business has varying degrees of corporate governance. Formal governance structures grow as the business grows and becomes more complex. Governance processes trail business needs in most situations. When […] Read More