ABASA is a regulatory body for formal business rescue within the legislative framework as envisaged by new business rescue legislation.

ABASA membership is required to be appointed as a supervisor.

Admission criteria are to be based on experience and qualification during an interim period, thereafter based on having passed an exam.  The earmarked exam is the South African customised Certified Turnaround Professional exam of the ACTP.

TMA-SA members represent disciplines that:

• Manage, provide professional services to and fund troubled companies
• Govern, educate and study the industries and disciplines of turnaround, corporate renewal and business rescue

across all the stages of corporate decline - from emerging problems to acute and worsening problems to insolvency.

Turnaround managers

• Corporate turnaround managers working in line management positions in turnaround situations;
• Interim turnaround managers.

Service providers to troubled companies, and their financiers

• Turnaround practitioners;
• Consultants in corporate renewal, business transformation and turnaround;
• Lawyers, accountants and financial advisors;
• General management consultants in strategy, leadership, finances, organisation and operations;
• Insolvency practitioners, appraisers, auctioneers and liquidators.

Investors in and lenders to troubled companies

• Restructuring executives of banks, bankers and other lenders;
• Institutional investors, venture capital and private equity investors, development funds, etc.

Other members

• Government, academics and students.
  • Government - voluntarily membership by individuals who are in the employ of a governmental agency or who are members of a legislative body or who are judges.
  • Academic - voluntarily membership by individuals who are engaged in the academic profession and who participate or contribute to the turnaround management business through their teaching, writing, research or other professional activities.
  • Students - voluntarily membership by individuals who are attending a college or university full time, and who are interested in pursuing studies related to the turnaround management business.  Students may not vote or hold elective office.

Turnaround professionals can become certified by passing the ACTP (Association of Certified Turnaround Practitioners) exam, and complying to requirements regarding experience, references and ongoing education.