In this paper, a necessary and sufficient condition for the exponential stability of linear systems with several time-delays is presented. Such a condition is based on the construction of quadratic lower bounds for the Lyapunov-Krasovskii functionals on the special Razumikhin-type set of functions. The result reveals a constructive procedure for the stability analysis whose application is illustrated with examples. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.