Welcome to a new episode from English plus podcast. In this episode, we’re going to talk about business and we’re going to focus on financial success and failure. How do we talk about financial success and failure? We’re going to learn about a lot of useful terms we can use and a lot of ideas that we can use.

[00:00:23] When we want to talk about financial success failure, we will talk about cash mountains. We will talk about debt and debt problems. We will talk about turnarounds and bailouts, and finally, we will talk about bankruptcy. So without further ado, let’s start talking about success and failure, especially we’re talking about the financial success and failure for companies, and let’s start with cash mountains.

[00:00:46] Now, when we want to talk about cash mountains, let’s talk about a very good example in the market. And that’s Microsoft. Microsoft is an extremely profitable company over the years. It has paid or distributed some of its profits or earnings to shareholders. No doubt about that, but it has also kept profits in the form of retained earnings and built up its reserves.

[00:01:10] So the company may not pay you everything they make as dividends. They don’t just share everything with the shareholders and they don’t keep anything for themselves. It’s not about for themselves, its own reserves. That is what we call retained earnings. Now commentators may say that it is sitting on a cash pile or cash mountain.

[00:01:30] That is what we call cash mountain a lot in reserves and out. What do we use these reserves for these reserves can be used for investment or to make acquisitions? What does it mean of acquisitions obviously is to buy other companies. So that is our first part, and that is talking about cash mountains.

[00:01:48] Uh, a very good example is Microsoft, but you can think about a lot of other examples, a lot of other good examples, apple, Amazon, Google, all of the big tech companies. They’re all sitting on a cash pile or a cash mountain. So here, there’s something to talk about when we talk about success. Now let’s talk about the second part, which is not exactly failure, but it can be the beginning of failure or it can be just a problem.

[00:02:14] And the company can overcome this problem and become a very successful company afterwards. But that is the problem of debt. Now that is not a problem on its own, but we have some debt problems because that is essential to start a company, you can raise all the capital on your own. You need to get some loans and other sources to make your capital even bigger at the beginning.

[00:02:36] And that is all debt. You have to pay it back. That is not a problem. Unless the debt becomes a problem that often occurs in different combinations. Now we will talk about some expressions. We use to talk about a country’s foreign debts, and that can also be used for companies. Now let’s first talk about debt, repayment and debt servicing at that repayment or debt servicing is when a company repays its debt and or interest on it.

[00:03:02] Debt repayments refers to particular amounts, repaid that is debt servicing or debt repayment. Now when you can’t really pay back the money you owe for other companies or the world bank or other banks, it doesn’t matter. That becomes what we call a debt burden. That is when a company has difficulty repaying its debt.

[00:03:23] It’s still not a big problem yet, but it is a burden that burden you have a lot to pay and you find it difficult to pay, but you’re still repaying the debt. Now when the company can no longer pay its debt as planned. That’s what we call debt crisis. That is when the company can no longer pay its debt as planned.

[00:03:43] Now, when that happened, a solution is when a company arranges with lenders to put its debt into new forms, with new repayment dates, et cetera. That’s what we call debt rescheduling or that restructuring. And finally, maybe all that didn’t work and a company cannot make payments on its debt, even after rescheduling or restructuring or whatever they can’t pay.

[00:04:07] That’s what we call debt default. And that brings us to the topic of turnarounds and bailouts. Now, our example will be about the Northern rock bank. When the Northern rock bank was in financial trouble, journalists described it as sick. A link or troubled. And you can use those words obviously to describe a bank or another company in financial trouble.

[00:04:29] Now the UK government called in Ron Sandler, a company doctor. Now, when we say accompany doctor, we mean an expert in turning round companies like this. At first, he looked for another company to buy Northern rock and bail it out. So as to rescue it, that’s the meaning of bailing a company out to rescue the company.

[00:04:48] Now, eventually the government itself gave the bank money, hoping it would recover. The government said it would not allow the bank to collapse completely and to go out of business. So that is also the idea of turnarounds and bailouts. And finally, if nothing works, you know, you try it. Everything you can to save a company, to restructure the debt, to bail it out, to rescue the company, to bring company doctors, all of that doesn’t work.

[00:05:15] What is the last thing that should happen? That is bankruptcy accompany in serious financial difficulty has to take some legal steps. In the U S it may ask a court to give it time to reorganize by filing for bankruptcy protection from creditors. This means that the company doesn’t have to pay back its debts immediately in Britain, a company that is insolvent and unable to pay its debts may go into administration under the management of an outside specialist, gold and administrators.

[00:05:47] I have the company cannot be saved. It goes into liquidation or into receivership receivers are specialists who wind up the company. That means they sell the company’s assets and pay out what they can to creditors. Now, when a company is wound up like this and it sees us trading, it stops functioning and no longer exists.

[00:06:09] When a company is in difficulty and cannot be saved, it goes bankrupt or more informally. It goes bust. With that being said, we talked about the different problems that we can have in a company. Or of course, we started with talking about financial success. Like when we gave the example of Microsoft and the cash mountain, then we talked about debt and its problems.

[00:06:31] And then we talked about the idea of turnarounds and bailouts. And finally, if nothing else works, We talked about bankruptcy. Now it is important to know these things because when we want to talk about these things, we need to know what words to use and where to use them, how to use them. We don’t want to use the wrong word.

[00:06:48] When we want to describe a problem in the company. You don’t want to make it bigger than it is, and you don’t want to make it sound like it’s a small problem and it will go away in time. If it is a big problem, you should talk about it. You should use the proper language to talk about it. Now that being said.

[00:07:03] That’ll be everything I wanted to share with you today. I hope you found the information I shared with you useful. Let me remind you that you can find a lot of useful activities on our website, English plus podcast.com. The link is in the description. Take the link and take your English and knowledge to the next level with it.

[00:07:19] And there’s another thing. We’re going to start our offering of English plus premium starting from next week. And that includes premium episodes, but that’s not everything that includes premium courses. And guess what? One of these courses going to be business, and we’re going to talk about business management.

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[00:07:55] Business English is not the only course. It’s one of the courses that you will have access to. We will have grammar courses, we’ll have word power courses where you can build your vocabulary. And we’ll also have a literature course if you’re interested. But anyway, since we’re talking about business English, There is something for those who are interested in more about business.

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[00:08:32] And in this episode, we will use your questions. Your names and we will thank you for your questions obviously, and we will answer your questions. If the question is very big, we might even include it in one episode on his own, who knows, but if you have any questions, please go ahead to our website, ask us anything you want in the AMA section, or ask me anything.

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[00:09:27] There was a lot of good stuff that you can find there, English plus podcast.com. Don’t forget that. And you can ask us anything you want, and don’t forget to check out our premium offerings, the English plus premium. It’s definitely worth it. And with that being said, this is your host, Danny. I would like to thank you very much for listening to another episode from English plus podcast.

[00:09:45] I will see you next time.