The specialist in corporate finance and managing partner of Hodgson Strategies, Jorge Hodgson Golding, has published in LID Editorial ‘Financial Manual for SMEs: Practical Strategies for Entrepreneurs’. A tool for founders, chief executives, and board members seeking to equip their organisations with a solid financial culture capable of ensuring profitability and long-term sustainability.
In an economic context marked by the demands of access to credit and pressure on operating margins, Hodgson highlights a recurring phenomenon in the Spanish business fabric: the so-called «financial blindness». This concept defines the vulnerability of those companies that, despite having viable business models and rising turnover figures, suffer critical cash flow tensions due to making decisions without the support of real-time financial data.
Far from academic treatises laden with technical jargon, the book proposes a mindset shift at the executive level: abandoning the profile of the entrepreneur solely absorbed by sales and daily operations to adopt the strategic perspective of a risk analyst and an institutional investor.
«Business excellence is not a coincidence, but a financial decision. The real challenge for entrepreneurs and governance bodies is not to accumulate accounting knowledge, but to master the strategic dimension of capital. Nowadays, the viability of a company does not solely depend on its commercial capacity, but on the structural efficiency of its balance sheet», affirms Jorge Hodgson.
Four pillars for governance and corporate continuity
‘Financial Manual for SMEs’ articulates an actionable methodology structured around four fundamental axes for senior management and boards of directors:
• Cash flow control and risk anticipation: Teaches how to read the pulse of cash in real time and detect liquidity gaps months in advance, preventing peaks in operational growth from leading to financial bottlenecks.
• Elite banking negotiation: Reveals the internal criteria under which financial institutions assess a company's solvency and credit risk, providing keys to optimise debt structure and eliminate hidden financial costs.
• Protected scalability and efficient reinvestment: Establishes a tactical map for financing the company's expansion without compromising its autonomy or falling into over-indebtedness traps.
• Corporate governance, succession, and value architecture: In line with best practices of good governance in family businesses, the work emphasises the urgency of clearly separating corporate assets from personal ones. It also details how to design automated and professional management systems that allow for continuity and value generation of the company without relying on the constant physical presence of ownership.
Jorge Hodgson Golding (Santa Cruz de Tenerife) is managing partner of Hodgson Strategies, a boutique firm specialising in corporate finance, external financial management, and banking strategy for companies. With over 25 years of experience in executive positions within large multinational consumer goods companies (Danone, JTI) and financial institutions (Deutsche Bank, Arquia Banca), with training from top business schools such as IESE Business School, ESADE, and AFI. His work in the financial professionalisation of companies has been recognised with the CEPYME Award and the Capital Award for the best business advisory project.
