A Few Shades of Rescue: A Critical Assessment of the Rescue Concept

Across the globe, there have been several attempts to explain the nature of the rescue concept. This has given rise to two broad camps of understanding both in the UK and the US. As neither perspective of rescue is comprehensive enough to trump the other, and the rescue itself appears to permit the various shades of opinion, corporate rescue has defied precise description for decades. This paper examines the various perspectives of rescue; their similarities and differences. It concludes that no shades of rescue can be validly excluded from a description of rescue; hence corporate rescue is vague. In spite of its vagueness, there are, nonetheless, three core decisions that must be made where the goal is to preserve a distressed entity or its business. Further, it is unclear what may be termed successful rescue and the exact point at which this can be deemed achieved. Nonetheless, it is clear that the policy-makers prefer an outcome which sees the rescued entity preserved for a substantial period in the future. The focus of stakeholders at rescue therefore impacts the rescue process and proves a challenge to policy-makers. The paper argues for a more future-focused notion of rescue which requires a reconsideration of the roles of some stakeholders.