From satellite communication companies to pineapple canners, across the board Thailand's crisis-hit companies are slowly being put through the restructuring mill. The Asian meltdown seeped into every corner of Thai business, and just as the variety of casualties is wide, so too are the approaches to rescuing them or giving them a decent burial.
The term restructuring has come to cover everything from a cursory one-year debt moratorium for mom-and-pop businesses to the full-scale refinancing and reorganization of the country's largest conglomerates. There are nevertheless common themes that stretch across the whole process.
In 20 years in the restructuring business, Tony Norman, managing director of restructuring specialist Ferrier Hodgson in Thailand, has yet to meet a debtor who believes his problems are self-inflicted. "It's either the fault of the government, the tax man, the banks or God," he quips.
Norman, who is shadowed all the time by two Australia SAS-trained...
