Looks like Virgin Australia is dishing up the dirt re a secret deal to prevent Qantas being downgraded by Moodys.
Did the government do a secret deal with Qantas before Virgin Australia’s $350 million capital raising to prevent it being downgraded by investment ratings agencies?
In an open letter to Government released this afternoon Virgin Australia CEO John Borghetti raises media reports that the federal government had offered the “comfort letters to Qantas’s credit rating agencies, prior to our capital raising.”
Borghetti says in the letter “I would also note that if Virgin Australia had been afforded the benefit of such a letter, it would have enabled us to achieve superior outcomes from both the recent debt bond issue undertaken in the US market and the capital raising that is underway.”
This is a serious matter that goes straight to the government’s integrity or at the very least, good judgement, in business relations.
But even if the multiple media reports all came from an incorrect source, the Borghetti open letter, published in full below, makes a number of other points about the Qantas case seeking relief from competitive pressures from Virgin Australia, including its previous automatic success in raising more than $1 billion in capital raisings despite the restrictions of the Qantas Sale Act.
Full story here
Virgin says it was disadvantaged by secret govt Qantas deal | Plane Talking