The environment of restructuring is extremely dynamic: Interests are rather heterogeneous and the parties involved have different ideals. Thus, it is often not clear what is right and what is wrong in a given situation. That's why restructuring efforts sometimes fail only because of one particular stakeholder's behavior: As accurate as it may seem for a single person, so incorrect it may be with regards to the overall interest of all stakeholders and thus harm it enormously.
In order to meet these challenges, several codes of conduct were developed. Apparently, they partially lack acceptance in the business environment. Furthermore, they are not comprehensive enough as they only target certain stakeholders and stages of a restructuring process.
That’s why the new Oliver Wyman study “The Bigger Picture – Value and constraints of a code of conduct for restructuring” discusses the question to what extent one should expand existing codes of conduct and what requirements are needed to make a code of conduct work in a business environment. The study is based on an exclusive survey of around 150 experts from companies, banks, financial investors, and other restructuring experts.
The main result is the following: A code of conduct is meaningful once it provides all players with specific guidelines for action in dynamic situations without abrogating the steering mechanism of the market.
