Viking Airlines
from todays Independent
Directors of the collapsed XL Leisure Group, which fell into administration last September leaving thousands of passengers stranded, have emerged as backers of Viking Airlines, a firm that will fly British passengers to and from the Continent this summer.
Less than six months after XL founder Phil Wyatt was filmed crying on TV, amid the collapse of the firm with debts of more than £100m, his new business Black Pearl Investments, named after Johnny Depp's ship in Pirates of the Caribbean, has taken a 50 per cent stake in Viking through its Icelandic operation, BPI Iceland Ltd.
Alongside Wyatt, Halldor Sigurdarson, XL's former finance director, and former XL director Magnus Stephensen, are backers of the new investment firm behind Viking.
A spokesman for Companies House in Sweden told The Independent on Sunday: "I can confirm the shares for BPI Iceland are represented by a Magnus Stephensen. In the latest minutes that we have received, a company called BPI Iceland owns 30,000 shares in Viking Airlines AB."
Mr Stephensen confirmed that BPI had taken a 50 per cent stake in the airline. From this summer Viking Airlines will fly British holidaymakers, after it struck a deal to sell flights in the UK through Meridian Aviation, a firm run by Jim Wyatt, the brother of Phil Wyatt.
Meridian also recently signed a deal to provide seats in the UK to Kiss Flights, which is run by Paul Moss, a former director of Freedom Flights, a subsidiary of XL Leisure.
In September last year Moss is reported to have said: "Phil was – and is – absolutely devastated by the collapse of XL and is absolutely not involved in Kiss."
An industry source said: "While I'm not suggesting for a moment that Phil Wyatt and the others have done anything wrong, the fact that they are emerging at the heart of the industry less than six months after XL failed will leave many feeling very uneasy."
News of Wyatt's re-emergence comes as many people continue to struggle to get their money back in the wake of XL's demise. Zolfo Cooper, handling XL's administration, has conceded that most creditors are unlikely to recoup their losses.
Meanwhile, figures from PricewaterhouseCoopers released today are likely to provide little cheer for the UK travel industry. In under two years, the number of insolvent tour operators/travel agents has increased by 50 per cent, with 15 going in bust in the final three months of 2008. But PwC's Ian Oakley-Smith, said: "With around 30 airline failures forecast over the next year, travel organisers operating under the Atol scheme will be expected to find alternative air travel for their customers. This could finish off a number of smaller companies."
But he added: "XL had 3 per cent of the market and its demise will have freed up share for other travel companies. As more become insolvent in 2009, this will benefit some of the larger players and the gulf between winner and losers will widen."