WHAT IS FINANCIAL RESTRUCTURING?
The SVA can help a company determine how to stabilize its fiscal situation, develop a new business plan, and restructure itself to bring in additional capital.

BUYOUTS
A company's management and/or employees are often the most logical successors to current ownership. Well-structured employee buyouts, for example can offer particular advantages, including tax benefits to owners, and long-term job security to employees. The SVA will help employees and owners determine what is the best strategy for a given situation and then work to implement it.

SUCCESSION PLANNING AND OWNERSHIP TRANSITION
Many companies fail to survive the transition from one generation of ownership to the next. The SVA offers help in planning for such a change. We can provide access to programs, services, and resources at little or no cost that will sustain a company undergoing a difficult succession from one owner to another.

LABOR MANAGEMENT RELATIONS AND HIGH PERFORMANCE WORKPLACE STRATEGIES
Poor labor management relationships can put a company at risk. The SVA goes beyond mediation of specific disputes. Working with all parties, we can generate new ideas to view problems in a fresh perspective.

OPERATIONS AND COST MANAGEMENT
Many companies fail to either maximize the effectiveness of existing operations or systematically evaluate internal practies. The SVA, by identifying qualified consultants to review operations and finances, can help a company improve its competitive performance. The end results are practical solutions to problems that can improve a company's operations, product quality, and cost structures.

The Strategic Early Warning Network

The Strategic Early Warning Network (SEWN) is a public program that provides business retention and development services to troubled manufacturing companies throughout 62 western, central and northeastern Pennsylvania counties. The Program's objective is to save jobs and retain manufacturing businesses.

SEWN is the result of a unique collaboration between the Pennsylvania Department of Labor and Industry, several Workforce Investments Boards and the Steel Valley Authority. The Department of Labor and Industry funds the SEWN program and utilizes its Regional Rapid Response Representatives to deliver rapid response efforts to manufacturers facing mass layoffs or plant closures.

The Steel Valley Authority is an inter-municipal agency with headquarters located in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania with a SEWN office located in Harrisburg; and most recently the opening of a new SEWN office in Wilkes Barre, PA. These three offices staff and manage the SEWN program. SEWN is modeled after the Steel Valley Authority's pioneering work in industrial retention in the 1980s. The distinctive feature of this model is its insistence on devising market solutions supported by, not driven by, public economic development assistance for struggling businesses.

SEWN's services complement and enhance the types of assistance available from other public programs. SEWN's uniqueness is that its services form a bridge between public and private sector solutions to business problems as well as between labor and management. These services are provided on a case-by-case basis in cooperation with all affected public and private stakeholders. Through this Retention Team approach SEWN's services are:

• Cost-effective to both the company and the public.
• Structured to provide the distressed manufacturing business access to every available resource in a coordinated fashion.
• Designed within a framework that enables management and labor to quickly find common ground.