Firstly with the "put/call option.
SMB had until the 1st Dec 08 to either sell to whoever he wanted to or to make Lufty buy his share, after that Lufty had the option to buy without SMB saying no. I think there is more to this story than meets the eye,and i think we only have half the story at the moment.
The time SMB has decided to sell is slightly odd. It could be as speculated that now is a good time to get out and let the big boys play or as i suspect there has been a deal done with Lufty and Virgin! Possibly Lufty has bought Singapores share in Virgin or the whole lot and i think that will be announced when the dust settles from the Lufty takover of bmi.
That would also explain why Ridgeway is looking like a desperate idiot saying he will buy bmi from Lufty. Lufty dont want a one off payment they want to build a sustainable business that makes money year on year and that is not achieved by giving it to virgin.
Virgin serve no major use to Lufty or BA. The only reason i can think that Ridgeway is being so arrogant is that either he knows Virgin has been bought and wants to make it look like his idea to save face or, he really is stupid enough to actually beleive his own rhetoric that BA or Lufty care about Virgin!
If there are no plans in place for Virgin though its not looking good for them because they are now completely isolated!
As to the brand if it is only bmi that lufty have aquired then it would make sense to put it under Luftansas name. If virgin are involved then a new name maybe but i personally cant see any sense in keeping the lack of a brand bmi.
I hope its good news for bmi employees. There is going to be a lot of restructuring going on and people will loose there jobs but hopefully the majority of jobs will be safe.
Good luck to everyone in bmi lets hope it works out!
