Back in 2017, Donald McClure had only recently been appointed vice president of FP&A at Brinks Home Security when the company’s CFO at the time decided that it was the right time for retirement.
Unbeknownst to McClure—and perhaps even to the firm’s subsequent new CFO hire—a transformative chapter was about to get under way at the security firm that involved a massive restructuring and Chapter 11 bankruptcy.
For McClure, a 6-year Brinks veteran who had already had a hand in multiple debt refinancings, the Chapter 11 bankruptcy process proved to be yet one more experience that would advance him down the CFO path.
“We ended up negotiating a prepackaged restructuring, whereby we utilized the Chapter 11 process but at the same time sort of did all of the work in advance,” recalls McClure, who tells us that he quickly became the newly hired CFO’s “Number Two.”
Whether it was while consulting with the firm’s general counsel or with its CEO, McClure's CFO kept him ringside as they together educated others as to the ongoing process and its desired outcome.
“We were telling the story of the company in an environment where we were not just trying to refinance but also taking the constraints off to ask, 'What is the right capital structure for this business?,'" reports McClure, who notes that multiple financing partners were being engaged at once.
“At one point, we had four different types of debt and various stakeholders at the table trying to help us to figure out how we were going to structure this—it was really eye-opening in terms of understanding the importance of what we were doing and how the stakes were real," explains McClure, who adds that once the restructuring was in his rearview, he felt that it was time to move on.
Says McClure: “I knew that my work would be kind of done at this point, so I had been looking around and was able to find a company looking for a CFO.” –Jack Sweeney
