Originally Posted by
davidjohnson6
I am somewhat dubious that the Chapter 15 bankruptcy filing in the USA will be sufficient for the CDDC to decide that a credit event has occurred and thus rule that credit default swaps owned by the hedge funds (who also own bonds) will be triggered. A court filing in Europe would be rather more convincing of a genuine bankruptcy credit event. The CDDC got a bad rap for the way it handled Sears in 2018 - they will presumably want to show greater transparency to the financial markets this time round - although sadly they won't care a bit about the 20,000 TC employees whose jobs are on the line
Thomas Cook has relatively few assets in the USA - all traffic there is inbound tourism, and its hotels are in a mix of Africa, Asia and Europe. Furthermore, the filing with the court makes no mention of the word 'insolvent'. Thomas Cook does not have a registered office in the USA. I think the CDDC might view this as a sham bankruptcy and thus decide that the CDS protection should *not* be triggered which would then make the hedge funds holding the bonds potentially inclined to vote against any restructuring unless Fosun sweetend the deal for the bond holders. 5 year CDS rates on Thomas Cook have not substantially changed in the last 48 hours based on quotes on Bloomberg - although bid/ask spreads are admittedly very wide
I am inclined to think that the survival of TC beyond 1st October will be decided substantially by last minute horse-trading that goes on during the very last few days of September
Interesting. TC are in a weird place were being declared insolvent in one area but not another is to their benefit. I know they will be keeping the CAA abreast of all the ups and downs of the proceedings. However, since the ATOL license expires at midnight 30/09-01/10 there is a danger that things may slip too late for all the bits to line-up. Further, the CAA will be none to happy about the expenditure of preparing for a shut-down, which will rise rapidly as 01/10 approaches. I seem to recall the Monarch preparations in 2016 costing millions. Will definitely stay tuned.