Working Capital

Dash for Cash
With credit at a premium, freeing up funds from working capital gains a new urgency.

Karlheinz Hornung takes nothing for granted. He joined a subsidiary of German conglomerate Metallgesellschaft in the late 1970s, shortly before the group's 100th anniversary, and worked his way through the ranks. Then, in 1993, he was despatched to the company's head office in Frankfurt to help save the group from bankruptcy as the markets moved against huge, ill-judged derivatives positions built by oil traders in a US unit. Hornung participated in negotiations for the massive rescue package that saved the firm from collapse, later becoming finance chief of the smaller, humbler company. "That's where I learned my lessons," he says. continue