Why not just sell the business? I know that it is a family business and your father started it. Then you can get the money and invest it.
i think he said private firm is heavily in debt, and family personally guaranteed that debt, so they need to pay it off. story of many asian family businesses, including my grandfather’s company, wasted by my uncles and foreign competition post-liberalization. whenever i hear americans and europeans complaining about outsourcing job losses, i feel like slapping them senseless, after having seen what happened to my family. everyone suffers and benefits from globalization, so for the doctor to start complaining about his own science is disingenuous at least. lostinlife, you should really run a cash flow analysis on this business to see if it even generates sustainable cash from operations. also consider selling portions that are not generating CFO, and repaying every penny out of that sale to the banks. i took some very interesting courses at the TMA (turnaround mgmt assoc.) that you may find useful. also, read the mulford comiskey book on cash flow analysis, its very good and may be useful stuff for what you are dealing with. if your family is depending on your business skills to recover from a financial mess, you have to stand by them, but with tough love, not by throwing good money after bad. see if this is really maximize exit value situation, if the business is not creating cash.