TMA

The Turnaround Management Association is the professional body for corporate restructuring, turnaround and distressed business specialists. Founded in 1988 and headquartered in Chicago, it reports close to 10,000 members across 54 chapters worldwide, 34 of them in North America and the rest spanning Europe, Asia, Latin America, Africa and Australia. Membership is individual rather than firm-level, and professional membership at $475 a year includes membership of the member's local chapter. Discounted categories exist for people under 40 at the time of joining ($250 for up to two years or until age 41), for government, judicial and academic employees ($125), and for full-time students, who pay nothing but must show proof of enrolment. TMA also administers two credentials, the Certified Turnaround Professional and the Certified Turnaround Advisor, each with education, examination and maintenance requirements. It publishes the Journal of Corporate Renewal and runs a conference calendar including TMA Annual and regional symposia. Members are distributed across turnaround practice, law, lending, investment and adjacent professions rather than concentrated in any one of them.

How it works

An individual joins through the central portal, selecting a membership category and a local chapter; professional dues include chapter membership. Chapters run their own local programmes, and TMA Global runs the annual conference, regional symposia and the certification programmes. Members outside North America can join through a local chapter where one exists, or directly through TMA Global where one does not.

Typical member

TMA reports its membership as roughly 43% turnaround practitioners and advisers, 20% attorneys, 14% lenders and bankers, 3% investors and 20% other related professionals including receivers, appraisers, academics, government officials, judges and recruiters. Membership is individual only, not by firm.

TMA is a credentialing and chapter body rather than a network of principals, and its membership mix reflects that: advisers, lawyers and lenders outnumber investors roughly twenty to one. That makes it a service-provider community around distressed situations, useful for referral flow and for the CTP and CTA credentials, and much less useful for anyone seeking peer-level company with other capital allocators. Pricing is straightforward and low, and the under-40 rate is genuinely cheap, though it is capped at two years. One practical warning: TMA's own published figures disagree between pages. The Join and Benefits page gives $475 professional, $250 NextGen, $125 academic and $0 student, while the FAQ page still lists $300, $150, $125 and $75 and an older chapter count of 48. The Join and Benefits figures match the current chapter count and appear to be the live ones.

Editorial analysis by Peer Group Guide editors. It is separated from the record above and follows the editorial policy.