NABI

Service(s): Restructuring Services
Sector: Automotive

US owned NABI Autobuszipari Rt, remains a supplier of buses to major US transit authorities, with plants in the US, Hungary and the UK.  The parent was the first IPO post communism, with the Hungarian company listed on the Budapest exchange. 

Adrian Doble, Head of FRP Advisory’s Restructuring Team, was introduced by a US restructuring firm to oversee the European operational turnaround and to provide information flows to the bond holder in New York.  Together with his Restructuring Team, Adrian was also supportive on the bank negotiations in Budapest over 14 months. Adrian was engaged as Chief Restructuring Officer to the European operations and his counterpart in the US ran the overall project. NABI had huge internal cross border cultural issues and there was a serious over-manning situation in Southern Hungary where a new plant had been opened.  Additionally, NABI required a restructuring in the US where customer relations were at an all-time low. 

The FRP Advisory Restructuring Team created a regeneration plan, exposing pricing, costs and engineering deficiencies and worked on these throughout the project.  New markets were investigated and production configuration was changed. The Hungarian operation underwent a major cost reduction exercise. 

Key improvements were made to the company’s analysis of its overheads and profitability, as well as debt restructuring and asset utilisation.The UK business, Optare, was sold to management through Adrian prior to the entire business being sold to affiliates of Cerberus Capital.  The business continues in Budapest and hundreds of jobs were saved by the work carried out by two restructuring firms working hand in hand. 

As a consequence, the work carried out by FRP Advisory’s Restructuring Team was voted International Turnaround of the Year in 2006 by the Institute for Turnaround, Europe’s leading professional body for the operational, funding and advisory community. 

Andras Racz, CEO of NABI, commented:

"They have been with us to understand the unique nature of the business. There’s a very large integration between parent and subsidiary, so they spent time with both and made recommendations for various levels of asset sales or asset restructuring as well as operational restructuring.

I believe that Adrian and his team gave us good assistance in initiating the change. We substantially restructured our management staff, simplified levels of management processes and introduced a new business planning system.

To me personally it was very interesting to see the style of the work, how they approached things and the readiness to bring creative ideas."

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