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Allco Bust

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Old 4th Nov 2008, 10:26
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Allco Bust

From the ABC...

ALLCO placed into voluntary administration


Har Har Har Ho Ho He He

Good one Goeffrey! You can pick em.

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Old 4th Nov 2008, 11:05
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That was in the past and Geoffry doesn't want to talk about the past......
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Old 4th Nov 2008, 11:25
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how much did ALLCO offer for Qantas??? Understand tonight that they have entered voluntary administration with $660 million in the red
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Old 4th Nov 2008, 14:18
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Allco going into Administration conclusively tells you everything you need to know about the sheer lack of ability of the Board of Qantas and it's senior management.

If you ever have business to business dealings of any weight, of which the sale of your business is by definition the most weighty, the First thing you do is due diligence on your potential business partner.

I cannot for the life of me understand why QF entertained Allco's bid. Either everyone of its Board and Senior Management are just dumb ****s or they were blinded by dreams of money and/or power.

Look guys, anyone with half a brain can read a balance sheet. Anyone with half a brain can ask around about the reputation of the company and it's principle players. It's not particularly hard, and, considering the stellar talents supposely at the head of Qantas and the resources QF commands, it would have been easy.

Anyone with half a brain can also predict what a balance sheet will look like "after" a proposed transaction.

I have lost count of the number of beautifully dressed and softly spoken gentlemen, some with impressive qualifications from prestigious foreign Universities, who have whispered about wonderful transactions in my shelly pink ear. They even laughed at my jokes.

..But when a little due diligence was applied it invariably turned out that they either did not have two beans to rub together or the impressive institutions they claimed to represent existed as a post office box and a serviced office, or what they were proposing was illegal, or seriously to my disadvantage once the verbiage was stripped away.

The Allco deal stank from the outset. Thank your lucky stars it didn't proceed because by today you Qantas blokes and your suppliers would be praying for a Government bail out.

Come to think of it, you still might need one thanks to other stellar Board decisions like the A380 and Dreamliner.

Last edited by Sunfish; 5th Nov 2008 at 18:44.
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Old 4th Nov 2008, 19:31
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Get out the violins and hankies. The Age has a bit on Allco today:



Allco: an investor's tragedy | theage.com.au
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Old 4th Nov 2008, 19:39
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The deal as Sunfish alluded to stunk from the start.

For too long has slick finance speak been bamboozling many people. Old fashioned prudence was out of vogue. Perhaps the world economy going off a cliff as the shortcomings of the whizkids are exposed, will in time,ensure that transparency, accountability and prudence dictate the merit and ultimately the success of corporate financial decisions.

What astounds me is the complete lack of interest from the regulators.
It is the the correct application of regulation suited to the corporate environment that ensures compliance. Letting the foxes run the chicken coop has proven worldwide not to be a clever financial regulatory stance. It is time regulation at the big end of town was overhauled. They could start with the stinking pile of crap called APA/Qantas and the duplicity of all the protagonists..
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Old 4th Nov 2008, 19:39
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Isn't hindsight a wonderful thing
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Old 4th Nov 2008, 20:11
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Cravenmorehead

I think if you go back and read the threads that were written here at the time, people were saying the same thing. Nothing has changed because they were right.
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Old 4th Nov 2008, 20:50
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I cannot for the life of me understand why QF entertained Allco's bid. Either everyone of its Board and Senior Management are just dumb ****s or they were blinded by dreams of money and/or power.
Hubris run amok.
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Old 4th Nov 2008, 21:01
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You may ask questions of due dilligence etc, but it was never anything more than the promised kick-back that Margaret Jackson and Geoff Dixon in particular, and the QF board in general, stood to receive upon consumation of the Allco deal.

Those parasites are prime eaxmples of the greed and selfishness that has driven the current worldwide financial mess.
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Old 4th Nov 2008, 21:31
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Ironically Green and Coe are long-time rivals. Then there are the bit players: the consultants, directors, lawyers, auditors - all soi-disant experts too - all with specks of blood on their hands. What did they do to protect these assets from blowing up? Zero in almost all cases; there were fees to be had.
Don't get me started....... THE root of all evil
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Old 4th Nov 2008, 21:37
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Back then, as is the private equity custom, the consortium of smart guys was to have ripped out all the cash and replaced it with debt, sacked people, generally slashed and burned costs for three years, then tipped the thing, skinned, back into the share market via a suavely PR-ed float with a glossy prospectus and compelling turnaround story.

The $11 billion takeover play was to have been financed with $10 billion in debt - ''covenant lite'' at that. And Allco was to have had the majority equity stake at roughly 30%. Or controlled the majority stake rather, after winning the bid, exploiting the airline as collateral to borrow, then spinning off their equity stake into a special vehicle which would have been called Allco Australia Aviation Fund or some such.
Gee this journo is good......... he probably searched all the old pprune threads on the topic from the archives

Thanks Sunfish for the link, its made an entertaining read. I feel for those who got sucked in by this mob and the Mac Banks etc..... but these kinds of thieves eventually get what is coming to them.

I thought the system was tighter controlled after Bond/Skase/Connel et al.
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Old 4th Nov 2008, 22:14
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cant say I'm upset at the demise of AFG.But the top dogs there will be limited in their exposure and no doubt have done well out of the business model whilst finance, hence gearing was cheap.

Its the small shareholders and creditors that will be reamed.I do feel for them, I've been there with other listed companies.

I campaigned quite hard against the takeover from day one both in person, in writing to any politician who would listen (some did and from surprising places too) and on other online forums so there's no Mondays expert syndrome here.
I even bought qantas shares to vote it down.Made a few bob out of it as well as the share price travelled above the takeover offer for sometime after.

As for why they (the board et al) did it, well some I guess did so cos they likely saw it as a good price and initially it was, fact.

Directors are charged with looking after the firm in the interests of the owners.As the qantas directors/exec's seemingly were coaxed into actually releasing upgrade after upgrade to the profit the offer price looked less impressive.The fact the upgrades seemed not to be released in a timely manner was the subject of much concern from some big holders.

Others directors /exec's certainly had a huge ,indeed massive, incentive to convince the insto's and smaller holders.

A huge debt of gratitude to those big insto's who saw the light.Some of those holdouts were drummed out of their jobs for sticking to good conservative policy.

Whilst the share price is sick right now and some in the pro takeover camp no doubt are saying I told you so, not one of them I'm sure had any clue what would happen in the financial world a year or 2 later.

What some forget is that some insto's buy good companies who make real profits with real dividends so their clients have a source of income.If qantas were in the consortium's hands right now they would be lucky to service the debt let alone pay a divvie.
So, the SP is down but they continue to pay a divvie to holders and that is quite important for those investors who are not active traders.
They would have gutted the place looking for loose change anywhere.

Frankly I think its a disgrace the exec team and board held their jobs after it fell over.Their positions were untenable.The shareholders voted down something they clearly pinned their colours to and lost.
They should have had the guts and decency to stand down there and then.
It was in effect a vote of no confidence and most continued to reap the rewards of high office while trying to ream the workforce.Its the worst kind of hypocrisy.Do as I say not as I do.
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Old 4th Nov 2008, 22:24
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I thought the system was tighter controlled after Bond/Skase/Connel et a
That may have been the idea or promise but the reality is more of the same but on an even larger scale..Some of the guys at the top have no idea or concept of responsibility.

That's why we are in the mess that exists at the moment and of the almost obscene level of corporate remuneration which even now seems to know no end.

There are examples of banks in the US being bailed out then spending 100's of thousands if not millions of dollars on golden handshakes and corporate parties to celebrate...

The common line used by the 'suits' to justify their immense pay scales is that you get what you pay for...

Well we got it alright.......Economic meltdown
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Old 4th Nov 2008, 23:46
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BTW, welcome back Sunfish. Dare I say, I've missed your input around here lately!
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Old 5th Nov 2008, 01:01
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Now where is Brian Burke in all of this. Sad for the shareholders, no doubt the directors are half way to the Caribbean by now, with the lot in the wifes name. How come we could see it coming but the QF board did not? White collar crime has been committed, and nobody cares.
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Old 5th Nov 2008, 02:08
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That was in the past and Geoffry doesn't want to talk about the past......
But look at the share price now.... Surely it was better for the shareholders
to sell to APA
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Old 5th Nov 2008, 04:13
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Quote-

"Surely it was better for the shareholders to sell to APA "

________________

Even better for the senior executives

Who cares if it would have crippled, if not destroyed, the airline
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Old 5th Nov 2008, 05:11
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A good article in the Age by Michael West. But surely he has been too gentle on the hedge fund manager when he says:
You can laugh now, it didn't happen, thanks to a suspicious hedge fund manager who refused to vote his stake at the eleventh-hour because he thought the deal promoters were lying to him when they pleaded they didn't have the numbers to get the requisite 50% to proceed with their bid. He held out for more in the mop up - which never came.
I’d rather use the words of Jennifer Hewett to remind us of how these people really operated. I don’t need hindsight to remember the almost-done deal – I was also saying it was crook at the time.
Giant bluff goes badly wrong, no hedging it

The Australian | Jennifer Hewett | May 07, 2007

AMERICAN billionaire Samuel Heyman woke up early Friday morning in the US to several frantic and incredulous phone calls. The most furious were from two giant US hedge funds.

The funds were beside themselves that Heyman had managed to scupper the entire Qantas deal by reneging on a mutual understanding. This agreement had been supposed to deliver just enough stock to get the bid across the line by 5am, New York time.

Not delivering on the deal was not in the script.

Yet there it was. A complete world-class debacle. Forget Qantas retail shareholders or the Qantas board or the passengers or staff or even angry Canberra politicians. This was all about the giant game of bluff played by international hedge funds for hundreds of millions of dollars in hard cash.

The belated appearance of 4.9per cent of Qantas shares from Heyman five hours after the Friday deadline was evidence of a desperate effort to fix up a massive bluff gone horribly wrong. It was all too late.

The problem was that Heyman tried to outfox even his peers in the hedge funds, only to end up ruining the whole big money game by accident.

Greed outwitted itself, wrecking reputations and Airline Partners Australia's $11 billion bid at the same time.

Now the Qantas board under Margaret Jackson is in crisis, the share market is in suspense and the bidding partners and funds are still desperately - and unsuccessfully - trying to salvage what they can.

"If this was an elaborate and cunning plan, it was straight out of Blackadder," says one insider.

Back in Sydney, the bidders at APA and the Qantas board were stunned by the failure to get to 50per cent of acceptances by the 7pm Friday deadline.

Over the previous several hours, repeated calls from the team at Macquarie Bank, led by Tim Bishop, had given no indication Heyman would not accept the bid, merely that he would delay as long as possible. Meanwhile, the great man was sleeping.

But Heyman was soon to be almost as stunned and dismayed as many in Australia. He had privately believed the deal would get through without him, no matter what those sharp boys at Macquarie Bank had warned.

He had seen them in action before, and he was sure they had 5 per cent more acceptances they weren't telling him about.

Otherwise all the hedge funds, including Heyman's own, stood to lose hundreds of millions of dollars. And that was a result an aggressive operator like Samuel Heyman certainly didn't want.

His own hedge fund held 10 per cent of Qantas, and two other funds, Polygon Investment Partners and Highbridge Capital Management, had another 10 per cent combined.

The agreement had been that, between them, they would each deliver 45 per cent to 60 per cent of their holdings - enough to just edge the deal over the 50 per cent minimum acceptance required by the deadline.

But Heyman didn't make all his money by playing fair over the past few decades. He had apparently been secretly determined to keep all of his Qantas holding. This meant he would have even more stock to keep trading over the following two weeks, trying to earn yet more millions by gaming the difference between the $5.45 offer price and the lower price available on the market.

With enough shares, even a few cents difference can translate into big profits.

Now, as Heyman belatedly understood all too clearly and the other two hedge funds were angrily reminding him, he had lost his bet big time. And it would cost them all dearly. Perhaps up to $1 billion, depending on what level the Qantas shares fall to.

"He was trying to be so tricky he caught himself coming back the other way," says a seasoned player.

Nor was it a simple matter to suddenly change the rules. APA, in shock and confusion, had put out a formal statement at 8.30pm Sydney time (6.30am New York) on Friday, saying the bid was dead.

At home in Melbourne, a bitterly disappointed Qantas chairwoman Margaret Jackson knew she was facing a brutal onslaught of criticism even if she had nothing to do with the fiasco of the bid's failure.

Her attempt to put what had seemed a generous offer to shareholders last December had ended in an unprecedented disaster, leaving Qantas at the mercy of hedge funds which apparently couldn't even manage their own financial trickery.

APA was just as morose. It had put the 7pm Friday deadline on precisely to bring to an end the continual meddling in the offer by the hedge funds. Now it had all exploded in their faces. No one could initially comprehend what Heyman's motive had been. They couldn't understand whether it was an accidental oversight, a deliberate strategy they didn't get - or a massive miscalculation. It turned out to be the last. But it didn't matter. The hammer had gone down. It was all over.

Back in New York, however, Heyman was hurriedly trying to turn back the clock. He was spurred on by his incensed hedge fund colleagues at Polygon and Highbridge.

Most of the hedge funds had bought in at about $5.15 a share. If the Qantas share price falls back below $5, they will have lost hundreds of millions of dollars.

They were determined that shouldn't be allowed to happen.

Heyman held about $1 billion worth of Qantas shares, 4.9 per cent in direct shares and 5.1 per cent in complicated derivatives. He sent acceptances for his 4.9 per cent worth of shares just before midnight Sydney time, meaning the bid was now just over the minimum 50 per cent required.

The various players at APA suddenly had to regroup, hurriedly trying to breathe life back into the corpse. They put together a second statement that was sent out just after 4am on Saturday. This declared that even though it "appeared" the offer had failed to reach the 50 per cent level required on Friday evening, "an acceptance from a large investor" subsequently would take it over the threshold. The statement said the bidders would apply to the Takeovers Panel to allow the offer to continue.

But APA's initial statement declaring the offer would not proceed had publicised and politicised the whole mess.

A hearing of the Takeovers Panel consists of three members drawn from a range of 38 part-time business, legal and academic experts. They were clearly unimpressed by the last-minute attempts to get the APA offer back on track.

"The circumstances of which APA has complained are in relation to a single sophisticated shareholder with a significant interest in Qantas, who should have been well aware of the closing time and date for the offer and of the implications of not meeting that deadline," the panel decision noted firmly yesterday.

APA is now applying for a review of that decision by the Takeovers Panel and the Australian Securities and Investments Commission. Few in the market believed last night that this desperate grab for a foothold had any chance of success.

The Qantas board held a grim meeting last night, ahead of putting out a statement withdrawing its support for any efforts to keep the bid alive. It's already been an almost unbelievable nightmare for an airline that likes to congratulate itself on being well run. But the nightmare will continue when everyone comes to work this morning.

APA is keeping quiet as it tries to unscramble the omelette.

The group is made up of Macquarie Bank, TPG, Allco Finance and Allco Equity Partners and Canada's Onex Partners. Smart, sophisticated players all. And now looking decidedly foolish. How could it all go so catastrophically wrong in this world of smart suits and high finance?

But it is Samuel Heyman and the other hedge fund managers who will be fighting most ferociously to regain any advantage they can out of their own disastrous mistakes. Heyman is clearly going to be marked as the man responsible for the disaster, particularly by his "friends" at Highbridge and Polygon. Presumably the paybacks will be vicious.

But right now they all have a vested interest in trying to help each other solve the problem as much as they can. "Some of the biggest hedge funds in the world own nearly half this company and they are looking at huge losses," says one of those involved. "You wouldn't want to be standing between them and a pile of money."

Unfortunately for Qantas, that is just where the airline is.
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Old 5th Nov 2008, 06:23
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Gooday OS

The modern corporate raiders have no idea about the "moral & ethical compass" and in fact threw them away when the new gen "moral & ethical GPS" was introduced.

Trouble is they are all so smart they can't read and comprehend the User Guide...........

I actually wonder how much better off we all would be with a simpler financial system without all the hedge funds and wheelers and dealers and short selling etc etc etc etc........ you get the idea

J
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