You are Katrin Vollmer, Group CFO of Rheinwerk Komponenten AG, a family-controlled maker of powertrain components in Wetzlar, Germany. In thirty days the banks test your covenant, and before you spend a euro protecting the group you must decide how to build the risk register the whole plan will rest on.
The situation
It is Monday, 14 September 2026. Rheinwerk machines aluminium and steel housings, brackets and thermal parts for combustion and electric powertrains: 2,400 people, three plants (Wetzlar, Plzeň in Czechia and a small finishing site in Hungary), 2025 revenue of EUR 540 million and EBITDA of EUR 59.4 million. Net debt is EUR 210 million, 3.50 times EBITDA, against a ceiling of 3.75 on the EUR 180 million syndicated loan you negotiated yourself in 2023. The founding family has already said it will not put in new equity.
Three papers sit on your table. The bank's notice confirms the leverage test for 15 October. Treasury puts twelve-month earnings Value-at-Risk at EUR 24 million — the loss on EBITDA expected to be exceeded one year in twenty — against a board tolerance of EUR 15 million: aluminium is up 18% and hedged only one month out, and the non-euro book, about 30% of revenue, is unhedged, with a translation swing of EUR 7–9 million a year. The third paper is about your largest customer, a tier-one powertrain assembler that moved from 45-day to 75-day payment terms in June and trapped about EUR 22 million in receivables. Liquidity headroom is EUR 11 million against a floor of EUR 20 million, and a EUR 60 million bond matures in nine months.
At Friday's risk meeting your group treasurer pointed out that the same customer is also your largest source of non-euro invoicing. If its region weakens, Rheinwerk takes the currency loss and the late payment in the same quarter. Nobody has yet worked out whether that changes the EUR 24 million. The board has earmarked EUR 12 million for risk mitigation, to be committed next, and wants to see the register first.