Interview – Agnès Courtade, Akordia

DEALCOCKPIT : Can you introduce yourself?

Agnès Courtade : I've been an independent interim manager for three and a half years at Akordia, which I co-founded. Since the beginning of this year, I've been running it on my own. I set up Akordia after 15 years' experience in various financial roles. First, ten years in restructuring at Deloitte and EY, then as CFO in a company and then as investment director for a French family shareholder. This investor, a majority stakeholder, entrusted me with a role that involved both being a shareholder and supporting entrepreneurs, which ultimately led me to set up my own business to support companies in complex situations as well as teams and managers in transitional phases.

DC : You started out in restructuring. How did you choose this field?

Agnès C. : I studied finance and entrepreneurship at Dauphine, but couldn't see myself working in a bank or spending my days behind a computer as a financial controller. At the time, a friend who was doing an internship at EY told me about the restructuring department, which combined everything I was looking for: consulting, finance, law... I landed an internship at Deloitte, in the team of Guillaume Cornu and his partner Philippe Héry. This job was generally reserved for seniors, so I was one of the first junior recruits and one of the few women in the team (there were two of us).

I was right-hand man to Ameziane Abdat and Damien Mignot, and Ameziane took me under his wing and became my mentor: he taught me everything. I embarked on this adventure, first at Deloitte, then at EY, who poached me when Eight Advisory was created.
During my 10 years with these firms, I worked a lot with Ameziane, who is a financial professional but who is also very familiar with legal practice. He often worked for family companies, which was another aspect of what I was looking for: the human side of the profession.

DC : Your career went on to be very diverse. What happened after EY?

Agnès C. : We are the business equivalent of first responders, a very demanding profession that makes it difficult to find a work-life balance.

EY offered me the chance to become a partner, but I could no longer identify with working for a big company, so I didn't see myself becoming a partner. This is also when I had the opportunity to become CFO of Cop Copine. I arrived at Cop Copine with a managing director to restructure the company, but we had disagreements with the founding shareholders on several points. The adventure thus came to an end after six months. At that point, I realised that this period had cost me my last life points, my last Mario Kart heart.

I decided to take a break for the whole of 2018. I went hiking in Nepal, walking in the Himalayas, then to Corsica to take some time off... After this time, I did a skills assessment as part of the Switch Collective programme for two months. The assessment highlighted my orientation towards meaningful work. For me, that meant supporting projects and teams, helping them grow and having a role of transmission and education. At EY I was responsible for recruitment in my team and I organised staff training. What got me up in the morning were the men and women, imparting and learning.

My last EY client, Emmanuel Deroude, former CEO of TATI, was working for Philippe Ginestet at the time, forming a sort of family office, and had bought 15 companies for which he was looking for a right-hand man. Being a curious person, I accepted his offer. However, on clear conditions: no work in the evenings or on weekends. I did not want to go back to the extremes I had experienced, and these were the red lines I set myself.

The two of us thus started working on this venture together, in Paris, with no office, until the fund invested in a coworking space called The Bureau.
His approach was to invest in individual entrepreneurs with projects that interested him. This allowed us to support a wide range of meaningful projects over a period of two and a half years, including insurance, coworking, gaming applications, digital marketing, SilverTech etc.
We supported companies from all walks of life, of different sizes, at different stages of maturity, both in the start-up and growth phases. During the COVID-19 crisis, we also played a protective role for certain companies, which brought back my restructuring reflexes.

I then recruited Alban Duchêne, with whom I had worked at EY and who would become my associate over the past three years. Our collaboration with Philippe Ginestet came to an end at the beginning of 2021 for various reasons, but after all the experiences we had accumulated in our work, we realised that we loved what we were doing. We therefore decided to put ourselves at the service of entrepreneurs to give them access to a quality of consulting that is dynamic and human.

DC : There are a lot of actors in your field. What is your trademark?

Agnès C. : We are relatively young within this line of work: most transition managers are generally 10 to 15 years older than I am (I'm 41). My advantage is my agility. Thanks to my experience and background, I'm just as good at talking to lawyers as I am at talking to shareholders, the government and employees. I know how to get my hands dirty as well as how to reason on strategic subjects and I have the capacity to be agile within a company and in complex situations, while remaining focused on the human side of things, which is part of my character.

Our first client was a small Parisian company, Fruttini, which has brought frosted lemons and oranges back into fashion. Then we took on a big assignment that was brought to us by my former bosses at EY - network is everything - who put my name forward for the financial direction of Pimkie, which was in the middle of a major restructuring at the time. I left for a two-month assignment, as usual, and stayed on for a year and a half, until the company was sold in early 2023.
I worked alongside the teams and took over the entire finance department, as well as the logistics and transport divisions, on an interim basis. Since then, I've been taking on a series of different, fairly long interim management missions.

DC : Would you say it was rather your beginnings in the Big 4 or the Himalayas that were the foundation of what you do today?

Agnès C. : I think it's a combination of everything. In life, nothing is black or white, it's always grey. My experiences have led me to where I am today because I've managed to find my balance in what drives me. Naturally, that comes with a price and with risks. Not everyone is cut out to be an entrepreneur: you have to go out there and secure your revenue, you have to be a salesperson, do your administration, your bookkeeping... But I do it with independence and freedom and that suits me very well.

When I left EY, I asked myself whether I wanted to continue in consultancy. Ultimately, it is a role that I really enjoy today, especially because I am doing it under my own brand, Akordia, hence with my own way of doing things, my own values and my own expertise.
Having had the opportunity to be trained for 10 years in these firms, in this team of Guillaume and Ameziane, was a precious educational experience. I learned everything from them, and they helped me get to where I am today. It's also thanks to all the other people I've met along the way, but those 10 years with them were very shaping in what I do today and in the way I do it.

DC : As you said, not everyone is cut out to be an entrepreneur. How did you know this was the right path for you?

Agnès C. : When I finished Dauphine, I opted for a Masters specialising in entrepreneurship. I wasn't accepted at EM Lyon, but I had identified that I didn't want to limit myself to finance, I was looking for a job that would give me a sense of liveliness on a daily basis.
Joining a large organisation and becoming a financial controller just wasn't for me. In restructuring, even in a big firm like EY, with its codes and rules, I was part of a very particular team in which we all had a touch of madness. It's a world apart: we were called the “cowboys”, a rather symbolic nickname.

As for setting up my own business, it was simply the right timing. I'd done my life as an employee, had reached a certain level of maturity and had a solid network, which is the key to launching oneself into entrepreneurship. The planets seemed to be aligning to tell me: ‘Give it a go, because if you don't do it now, you'll regret it for the rest of your life’. And it worked.

DC : Congratulations! What types of companies do you primarily accompany?

Agnès C. : I mainly work with companies in complex situations. Parallel to this, I take on what I like to call “pet” projects where I help people to set up their own companies. I guide them by asking the right questions and helping them structure their business plan and business model. It's an approach that falls outside the scope of my main activity, but one that nourishes me.

DC : Are there similarities between these different challenges?

Agnès C. : I work for a lot of people who have set up their own company, who have never been entrepreneurs before and who don't necessarily have any financial or legal knowledge. Entrepreneurs are not always trained in business management, cash flow, finance, or even how to read a balance sheet or understand what their accountant is talking about. There are some excellent accountants, but some subjects remain highly technical and difficult to explain. This is one of my big battles too: to vulgarise finance to help entrepreneurs understand their figures, their balance sheets etc. But also helping them to manage their teams, which is just as essential, beyond the product and the client. You need to have a 360-degree view of your business.

DC : In your approach, what is the key element for your clients to succeed?

Agnès C. : Working with companies in difficulty, I sometimes arrive too late. The challenge is to find the best escape route, but there is no guarantee of that.

The key is to be able to anticipate, which is easier said than done. To do that, you need to network, exchange and discuss, because it's often outside views that alert you and have the ability to identify potential consequences of a decision that you might have overlooked. The more we are able to anticipate, the more the risks are minimised.

Just as important is staying calm in stressful situations. I learned a lot about this when I worked at Pimkie with Philippe Favre, a specialist in business turnarounds. Despite the complexity of the situation, he never added stress to stress. He always used to tell me that he slept well - I don't know how, given what was at stake! - but he took things one step at a time, without rushing.
In this job, we can't save everyone, but we always give our very best. Getting worked up only adds to the chaos and increases the risk of mistakes. On the Pimkie case, we didn't work much in the evenings or at weekends, even though the workload was enormous. And yet we managed to get the job done. I've thus learnt that you can also achieve results in a calm manner. I always keep that in mind.

DC : What are the first signs an entrepreneur should look out for to know if they need external support?

Agnès C. : Already, if you've been losing money for years and your EBITDA remains negative, these are clear signals. Personally, I'm convinced that you should never stay by yourself. A company director is often very much alone in steering his ship: he has to pull his weight, bring in revenue, manage his teams, he may be a shareholder in his company: these are the rules of the game, but you don't have to be on your own. It's important to network, to surround yourself with people and to exchange with your peers.

Generally, the accountants are the first line of advice for company directors, whatever the size of the business. But you should never hesitate to go further and seek out services such as ours. Of course, there is an initial cost, but very often spending money today avoids bigger problems tomorrow. Ultimately, getting help is often cheaper than not doing so.

DC : What role does digitisation play in a successful operation?

Agnès C. : Digital technology is a subject that I would like to educate myself more about. I'm one of the people who appreciate the power of machines and AI for financial modelling but prefer to understand the underlying mechanisms in depth. I need to know where a company's figures come from, rather than having a grey box in front of me that does everything for me. When I arrive at a company I dig deep into the details. It's part of my job and part of my logic for understanding a case, and I enjoy having a profound understanding of everything.

DC : You make use of DealCockpit, and we thank you for that. Is this part of the same subject in your opinion?

Agnès C. : A data room is indispensable. I'm all in favour of collaborative and facilitative tools. Their advantage is that everything is in the same place, the Q&A's are available to everyone, all the parties involved have access to the same level of information and there's never any notion of slacking off for a client. I cannot see myself setting up a data room on a SharePoint, for example, because that would be unmanageable. Access authorisation levels and the ability to track who has consulted what when are extremely important in a handover process.
In this case, digitalisation is a genuine asset.

DC : Why did you choose us?

Agnès C. : For our current case we asked the professionals involved if they knew of any data rooms and the name DealCockpit came up. I had met Fiona Fauvel at an event organised by the “Women in Restructuring” association: this was the opportunity to work together. I think it important to support a French company and thus this entrepreneurial project set up by Fiona.
What's more, DealCockpit is a tool with a very good reputation, which had to be tested and recommended.

DC : Any aspects we can improve?

Agnès C. : Perhaps a technical detail: it would be useful to be able to select several files in the data room structure to allocate them to the different sections.

DC : Thanks for the feedback. Finally, do you have any last words of advice for business owners?

Agnès C. : The key is to anticipate, surround yourself with good people and rely on the right advice. It's also important to work with the right people: there are a lot of consultants out there, but you have the right to say no when something doesn't suit you, and the consultant must respect that.

As consultants, we provide a service tailored to the client. If this is not the case, it's because it doesn't correspond to their specific need, and that's no problem. I don't believe in making money at any price.