Impressive numbers

'So we were there and all of a sudden, Sept 11 happened. And everything changed. Overnight. Even our global economic issues of the day weren't so sudden. They feel very sudden to us today, but if you were a company that was making hundreds of millions of dollars of income and more hundreds of millions of dollars of free cash flow one day, and the very next morning, wake up and not have that environment any more, it was quite remarkable in that if you ever doubt you can ever respond to a crisis, listen, react in a different way and change - change your whole perspective - then that episode proved to me at least that I, and we as a team at Delta, could do those things.'

She continues: 'We had chosen to go into the debt markets just before, literally the Thursday before, Sept 11, and we had sold some debt, because we weren't desperately in need of the cash. But we were going to buy some aircraft, and we priced that debt very attractively - it was four times over-subscribed.

'So we had four times the buyers to the amount of debt we wanted to issue, so very attractive, very healthy. But as with any kind of debt transaction, you don't close that day, you close a few days later, and our closing bridged Sept 11. And so I like to say - four days before Sept 11 we were four times over-subscribed, four days after Sept 11 we couldn't get people to go ahead and close. Now, we ultimately did. It was the very first debt transaction to close post-Sept 11, a US$1.25 billion transaction, where the credit markets found their way home to actually lend to Delta days after Sept 11. So it was one of the things I'm most proud of my team for being able to accomplish in that period.'

Atlanta-based energy company Mirant was 'a crisis of a very different sort', she says. 'That restructuring opportunity was in some ways jokingly referred to as 'extreme finance', because it was finance under a great deal of pressure.'

She was at Delta when Mirant approached her. 'They came and solicited for me to come and perform the job of chief financial officer and chief restructuring officer. At that time, Mirant had filed for bankruptcy a year before, and it was one of those acrimonious bankruptcies - the creditors and the company were misaligned, it was a very difficult, tense, stressful environment. And I did self-select. I mean, I did choose to go there and take that on as a challenge. It was a wonderful challenge, because the company, in my judgment, basically deserved to be saved. There were a number of jobs at risk, the company had good plants and facilities.'

And Mirant did turn around, in January 2006, and is thriving today. 'We did emerge, complete restructuring, the balance sheet was strong, the creditors got paid in full, and so the restructuring was highly successful in that regard. So for me, it was a great challenge to use the skills that I had honed over the years, put to very good use and help a very talented team, if you will, save a company.'

The time at Mirant taught Ms Burns perseverance and determination, 'but also a different level of negotiation, and patience, because there was no speeding up the process. The bankruptcy process is a process', she says. 'And so I learned a lot about patience in the face of our own impatience - continued crisis management, ability to stay cool under pressure, but a different experience than Delta'.

And then the Mercer experience so far 'has been just wonderful', she adds. 'It takes all of those things, the blend of consultative skills and the belief about people and the belief about the business model, where a highly skilled consultant comes to survey a client to solve a problem, all my feelings about how important that relationship is, and couple that with good business acumen, to improve, grow and expand our business around the world.'