Quote: "Rather than purely Bishop, I'd be inclined to point the finger also at Lufty's advisers just before they signed the contract (the 'put option') that allowed Bishop to force Lufty to buy bmi.
Agreeing to buy a company far into the future for a price that bears little or no relevance to the strength of the company when it changes hands and when there are no guarantees that the company will be well managed between now and then only encourages the main shareholder(s) to do as much asset stripping in advance as possible"
Yes the "put option" arrangement does appear ill-advised from LH's point of view. Suspect that at the time, LH were greedily eye-ing up the future opportunity to get its hands on 14% of LHR slots.
Well they now have 8% (for another week) so 6% have "disappeared" to LH, or been sold by LH to offset losses.
Either way it's a disgraceful example of asset-stripping, and a classic example of an artificial market distortion (i.e. slot trading) directly caused by an absence of adequate runway capacity at LHR.
How many are losing their jobs as a result?