Originally Posted by
Sunfish
I also note that as reported this morning, Deloitte is threatening staff with the loss of jobkeeper payments if they don’t approve DOCA.
Sunfish, how is it 'threatening staff' to point out the very simple practicalities of the choices ahead of them?
Sale of the business to Bain via a DOCA preserves the existing business and therefore preserves associations with it, such as the AOCs and, importantly for stood down employees, the employee's entitlement to JobKeeper. Those preservations are the reason for preferring a DOCA as the transfer mechanism over a straight asset sale.
You may recall that when JobKeeper was established one of the safeguards to prevent rorting was that businesses registering for it had to have been in existence and employing staff as of 1 March 2020 in order to be eligible. They also had to demonstrate a decline in revenue due to the coronavirus restrictions.
The administrator was pointing out that if the transfer of the business to Bain is not effected under the DOCA then it will occur via an asset sale. An asset sale would mean that a new business entity is created and employment would transfer to that new entity. That would immediately cause an issue for employee entitlements to JobKeeper.
Would you prefer that the staff just be kept in the dark about that sort of stuff?
Originally Posted by
Sunfish
’What comes next? The demise of Scurragh ...
His name is Scurrah, no 'g'. And frankly how would his departure be a bad thing?
The bloke had virtually zero airline experience when he came into the job and he then demonstrated an abject inability to get anything meaningfully positive accomplished once he was there. His much talked about 750 headcount 'rightsizing' is as good an example as any of the bloke's inability to get things done. Announced in August last year, and meant to have been completed by last Christmas, come February this year only 140 people had gone. That rightsizing was the business's most significant cost control measure so you'd think that it might have warranted management's attention.
More recently we had his 13 March
'The Group currently has a cash position in excess of $1 billion' pronouncement that turns out to have been a case of providing materially false or misleading information to the ASX in breach of Listing Rule 3.1 and in breach of Section 1309 of the Corporations Act 2001. And we now know that on the day that the administrator has determined the business probably slipped into insolvency, Scurrah was telling the market that
'We are well positioned to weather this storm.' The bloke ran a business that was insolvent for a month without realising it.
Yesterday he was opining that one of the business's big problems is a lack of consistency in partner airline offerings! From yesterday's The Australian article,
One thing that’s been made very clear to us is we need a more consistent level of service across us and our partners so that people know what to expect when they get on a partner airline,” said Mr Scurrah.“It’s been pretty good but it would be different what you got on Singapore Airlines as opposed to what you got on Delta. We want to make sure that’s more consistent
Seriously?! This is what is occupying this bloke's attention at this time?
Frankly, if he's not 'spending more time with his family' by Christmas I'd be very surprised.