Benjamin Wiles Featured in Business Quarter: All the Fun of the Fair

Benjamin Wiles, Managing Director in Duff & Phelps’ Restructuring Advisory practice, has been featured in Business Quarter providing unique insight into the successful turnaround of Dreamland, one of the oldest surviving theme parks in the UK and one of the sector’s most-unusual rescues.
 
“At Dreamland there were stakeholders who wanted to maintain a theme park for the family and celebrate purely the historic elements of that, but the reality is that you have to be able to diversify and bring in something current in terms of entertainment and festivals. We had to come up with some fresh ideas of what we could do for them for an appropriate investment” explains Ben.
 
Ben continued, “In that case – and I hope in more cases in the future – we are able to return a business to new shareholders or new directors and back to normal trading. The key principle around what we do is early engagement to find a better solution before the situation becomes a fait accompli for the business – and its employees – because we never forget that while we have a duty to advise the board as to how they should proceed, there will always be a very human aspect to it all, from employees to a director who might have put their life savings into the company.”

The full article is available on the Business Quarter website.