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Old 19th May 2011, 10:49
  #1151 (permalink)  
le grand fromage
 
Join Date: Oct 2007
Location: whereverilaymyhat
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G-AWZK
3rd floor at DH? Really....looks like you were in the clouds, given the offices ended on the 1st and the building ended on the 2nd! And there's one "n" in Donington.

As for the history lesson, it lacks some factual accuracy. I think you will find that some of the shareholders and Board were very keen to expand WW into a significant player but certain others were able to prevent it through the provisions in the shareholders agreement that allowed veto rights or required supermajority votes over significant expenditure or commitments. The critics of the lack of investment in BD and WW over the years have zero knowledge of the constraints which are imposed on both capital expenditure and long term commitments by a shareholders agreement which typically gives the minority shareholder (who might end up as the 100% owner) with lots of protection against big spending ideas of management and majority shareholders.

The set up of WW was of course done with existing BD aircraft and the consequences of not responding to the arrival of Go at EMA would almost certainly have meant the disposal of a large number of aircraft and the redundancy of large numbers of crew, another thing the critics seem to conveniently forget. A vanity project it certainly wasn't.

As for current strategy, I have no insider knowledge, but it is certainly a difficult position to be a small player in what is a scale game. Nevertheless the current team seem to be doing everything they can to keep things going and I wouldn't write them off just yet. As long as they don't cost LH any serious cash, they are unlikely to be closed down ( closure itself would be v expensive), sale to anyone is unlikely and for LH I imagine BD mainline is currently a much bigger problem to focus on.
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