Mr. John Trethowan:

The essence is cash generation. In all cases, what we are trying to do is to find what is the future cash generation of the business in question. If it is marginal or even insolvent, does it have potential to make it into the future? We would seek to look at what we call earnings before interest - tax, drawings and amortisation - which give a true-cast picture of the business into the future, and see whether that would sustain the required borrowing repayments. That is the key point.