The Zali Group

CFO advisory and financial turnaround for leadership that can no longer trust the numbers.

CFO leadership for owners, CEOs, and private equity sponsors, for the moment the financials can no longer give leadership an answer they trust.

Nearly two decades inside finance leadership across PE-backed, founder-led, and multi-entity organizations from $5M to $500M in revenue. Brought in repeatedly to reconstruct and correct financials, including statements that had already passed outside review.

Continuous lender relationship and covenant management since 2007. A practice built on what actually happens inside companies, not what gets written about them.

Nearly two decades
inside finance leadership
$5M to $500M
in revenue, across the work
Since 2007
lender and covenant management
PE & founder-led
multi-entity organizations
The problem

You can feel it before you can name it.

The numbers come in late. Two reports tell two different stories. Your lender is asking questions you do not have clean answers to. The team is working harder, and the picture is getting blurrier.

Most of the time, the issue is not the people. It is the structure underneath them. The reporting was built for a smaller company. The systems were stitched together through growth. The financial function was never rebuilt for the company you run now.

That is the work.
01

What sets the work apart

Most outside finance help maintains the books. This is the work of rebuilding them when they no longer give leadership a reliable picture, and standing them back up to the level a serious decision requires: numbers an owner or CEO can act on with confidence, and that hold up to a lender or sponsor when it counts.It is the work that begins where the financial help already in place has reached the edge of its experience, done by someone who has sat in the seat rather than described it from the outside.

02

How we help

Three lines of work, scoped to the situation rather than a fixed package. Most engagements involve more than one.

Financial turnaround and reconstruction

When the reporting no longer reflects what is actually happening in the business, the work goes back to the source level, finds where the picture began to break, and rebuilds the financials upward so leadership and lenders can stand on what they are looking at. This is what gets commissioned when leadership can no longer rely on the numbers in front of them, and a clean picture is the prerequisite for every other decision.

Lender and capital readiness

A covenant conversation, a line of credit renewal, a refinancing, or a capital raise has to land the way leadership needs it to. The work brings the financial package, the narrative around it, and the preparation for the questions that follow, all to the standard banks, lenders, and investors expect. The goal is a yes given with conviction, not a yes given reluctantly.

Financial infrastructure for scale

The work rebuilds the structure beneath a growing company: multi-entity consolidations that hold up under scrutiny, a closing rhythm leadership can plan around, and cash visibility that does not depend on one person knowing where to look. When the infrastructure is right, the finance team gets faster, the reporting gets cleaner, and leadership stops absorbing financial uncertainty as a tax on every decision. In its place is something quieter: financials leadership can trust, and the steadiness that comes from knowing the numbers are right.

What changes

What changes is quieter than it sounds. The financials become real again, numbers leadership can trust, and decisions stop being a matter of instinct. The lender or sponsor conversation steadies. And the constant low hum of financial uncertainty, the sense that something is off and no one can say what, finally goes quiet. Leadership stops managing around the numbers and starts leading with them.

03

Track record

A selected record from inside organizations ranging from $5M to $500M in revenue, across PE-backed, founder-led, and multi-entity companies.

01

Identified and corrected a $1.5M financial overstatementthat had gone undetected, restoring reporting integrity and improving gross margin from 12% to 21%.

02

Secured a $2M line of credit increase, improving available cash flow by 25%.

03

Reduced reliance on lines of credit by 75%at a $351M PE-backed multi-site operation.

04

Increased AR collections by 65%through process redesign and accountability structures that had not previously existed.

05

Improved cash flow by up to 40%across multiple organizations.

06

Built complete financial infrastructure from zeroat a PE-backed startup, producing investor-grade reporting from day one.

07

Led financial recovery and governance stabilization following a $2M internal misappropriation, restoring ownership confidence and preventing recurrence.

04

Who we serve

Leadership that already knows something is off and wants it handled by someone senior, discreetly.

Owners and CEOs

Founder-led companies that have grown past the financial structure they were built on.

Private equity sponsors

Sponsors whose portfolio company reporting does not yet match what they need to see.

Leadership teams

Teams that already know something is off and want it handled by someone senior, discreetly.

Engagements begin with a private conversation.

By inquiry or referral