Explained: Collapse of Thomas Cook

Описание: As cliché as it may sound, it indeed is the end of an era… a rather sad one at that.
Title
On the second last Monday of September the world woke up to some very shocking news. British travel firm Thomas Cook had declared bankruptcy after being in operation for 178 years.
The news also lead to the UK's biggest repatriation since World War II to bring back stranded passengers.
But what went wrong?
Thomas Cook was brought low by a $2.1 billion debt pile, which had been built up around 10 years ago.
Bad timing, geo-political tensions and increased competition are just some of the causes for its collapse. Let me explain.
Due to several ill-timed deals, it had to sell three million holidays a year just to cover its interest payments.
The company was hit by the 2016 coup attempt in Turkey, one of its top destinations, and the 2018 Europe-wide heatwave also deterred customers from going abroad.
When did it all start going downhill?
Thomas Cook needed another 200 million pounds on top of a 900 million pound package it had already agreed, to see it through the winter months
Now as you may know winter months for the companies that aren’t Middle East based aren’t ideal cus that’s when they receives less cash and must pay hotels for summer services – as was the case with Thomas Cook
Anyway, this additional request of 200 million didn’t go well and torpedoed the rescue deal that had been months in the making.
Under the original terms of the plan, top shareholder Fosun - whose Chinese parent owns all-inclusive holiday firm Club Med - would have given 450 million pounds ($552 million) of money in return for at least 75% of the tour operator business and 25% of its airline.
Thomas Cook’s lending banks and bondholders were to stump up a further 450 million pounds and convert their existing debt to equity, giving them in total about 75% of the airline and up to 25% of the tour operator business.
But when the bosses met lenders and creditors in London on Sunday to try to thrash out a last-ditch deal to keep the company afloat, they failed and the rest is history.
Let’s talk aftermath now.
So Thomas Cook wasn’t just a travel operator – they ran hotels, resorts and airlines for 19 million travellers a year in 16 countries employing 21,000 people and generating a revenue of 9.6 billion pounds last year.
After the news broke, there was a lot of painic and confusion especially among the stranded passengers and travellers but I’d say the company handled it well.
The Civil Aviation Authority said more than 90% of the 150,000 holidaymakers abroad at the time of Thomas Cook’s failure have been brought home to the UK under Operation Matterhorn.
The operation continued until yesterday Oct. 6, with around 900 flights planned with the total cost of the repatriation flights being £100 million.

The impact of the Thomas Cook collapse is being felt further afield, with Australian travel group Webjet Ltd saying it was 27 million euros ($30 million) out of pocket and British online travel group On The Beach saying it would suffer from helping its customers in resorts who had flown with Thomas Cook.

The collapse could provide a boost, however, to major rival TUI (TUIGn.DE), whose shares surged more than 10% in early Monday trading, and to Europe’s overcrowded airline sector, which could benefit from the closure of Thomas Cook’s airline.

However, all said and done, the news has been devastating for not just the people involved but also to the whole industry for having lost their veteran member from the market.


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