Originally Posted by
toledoashley
Thomas Cook isn’t a travel agent, they are a tour operator with retail shops. At the moment everything is owned by the group ‘Thomas Cook’. The Fosun takeover would be a little more complex due to the ownership rules of an airline - so the tour operation majority owned by Fosun, and the airline majority owned by the banks (the debt) to satisfy that. Regarding buyers - we have already gone down this path. Thomas Cook asked if anyone was willing to purchase the airline, but they wanted £800/900m for it (which is essentially what the current deal is on the table for the whole business) - so in the event of a fire sale breakup it would be just that - parts seem to be more valuable as a whole, just as Monarch was. Fosun, along with a Turkish Operator who took a small interest in the tour operation part would likely look at some of those assets.
We are now down to a similar position we had with Monarch, whether their ATOL would be renewed for another year and if they can satisfy the CAA that there is funding to see them through.
Other than the leases on the airframes the rest of TCX and Condor have little value to any non EU operator. They would loose the right to serve the US and much of the EU traffic. In reality of things are looking really bad for the overall group you could see someone jumping in and purchasing routes, crew, and a/c leases off of TC, provided they already operated type and the like. The key would be their willingness to take over current commitments. I have a sneaking suspicion that there are some groups that would love a bit of the action, but not at £800 million and not with long-term provision commitments.