Strategic Turnaround Management on the example of Karstadt Warenhaus GmbH

Research Paper (undergraduate) from the year 2016 in the subject Business economics - Business Management, Corporate Governance, grade: 1,3, University of applied sciences, Cologne, language: English, abstract: Turnaround Management is needed when the liquidity and revenue situation are a serious threat to the sustainable existence of a company, but the shareholders and the management strive for a continuation of the operating activities. In this situation, turnaround management aims to restore the operational performance, liquidity and creditworthiness by initiating a systematic restructuring process. Due to the critical situation of the company, also radical measures are possible to achieve those results.

The following assignment will focus on creating a theoretical background, considering the main aspects of turnaround management: Recognizing a crisis and analyzing in which stage a company already is, performing a turnaround along the right phases and knowing the main counter measures and key success factors of restructuring concepts.

Afterwards, the knowledge will be applied by analyzing the situation of the Karstadt Warenhaus GmbH, a German department store chain, which struggles since the turn of the millennium and tried several turnarounds since then. The relevant and publicly available facts will be summarized and the course of the crisis of Karstadt will be analyzed as well as the different turnaround attempts that have been made so far. Afterwards, recommendations for further actions are proposed.

Finally, the assignment will end with a conclusion about strategic turnaround management and Karstadt¿s situation. Due to the mentioned example, the focus of this assignment will be on the German market.