Interesting thread.
Theres definitely a bit of an aroma surrounding all this rush-to- buy. The big payouts to the lucky owners and the resultant new Range Rovers, Porsches and holiday homes appearing as a result have all got to be paid for.......and guess by whom?
The business justification seems to be "the story" to be told to potential clients about a worldwide operation,economies of scale plus bigger buying power to drive discounts on fuel, handling charges etc. That is all well and good but to retain all existing management and operational structures underneath a Luxembourg based bureaucracy ......all of which will have to be paid for doubtless by "management" charges levied on each individual company will be a massive burden....far outweighing any savings to be made out of discounts from bigger buying power.
Historicaly GA operations have good years and bad years. They are notoriously susceptible to economic downturns which appear like clockwork and during those downturns they loose money heavily. The established players some of whom have now been purchased have ridden these storms by shrinking down and controlling their debt in hard times. This debt burden is now out of their control.
These bonds representing this debt have relatively short dated maturities and they will have to be repaid with interest in full if the company is not to default. The combined business does not stand a cats chance in hell of generating profits to repay the tens if not hundreds of millions borrowed on such time scales...so Mr H is presumably hoping to have sold out or refinanced by the time the piper calls to be paid.....
Unfortunately pilots are not very business savvy when it comes to things like this but if I worked for a company that had been taken over by Lux I would be concerned to put it mildly and demanding some answers.......There is far far more to the story than is being officialy told......
I will be interested to revive this thread in three or four years and see who was right. I have a nasty feeling Ghengis might be correct.