Albert Hall,
I heard the rumour two/three months ago that Excel were bankrolling Golden Sun big-style this summer, i.e. half-a-mill plus. GS is the the tour op that went down.
Foreign ownership and control issues are complicated. Monarch's ultimate ownership was (is?) Swiss, I believe.
The huge perceived difference between sched service and charter operations is also relevant here. With charter no one much minds. But try to use UK route authority for a sched service operation to a point outside the EU where the UK ATL holder concerned is majority-owned by a non-UK national. and the DCA at the other end of the route (and or the foreign reciprocating carrier), can stop you.
In this case it doesn't matter whether the non-UK national concerned is an EU citizen or not, obviously.