"Virgin Australia Mk II could launch in as little as three months"
Unless he wants to purchase a small portion of the company not because it makes loads of money, but to simply ensure that his mining interests are serviced by a regular FIFO service. Mining is and will remain his focus, not airlines. Smart man. As a hypothetical, he buys in, if the purchased chunk is big enough he gets a seat on the Board so that’s good. But what if it isn’t profitable? Does it matter? He loses say $50m per year in the airline but it keeps his mines operating which personally fills his pocket with hundreds of millions of dollars per year. Sounds good to me. Even better, he might break even on his invested component or even make a couple of bucks. But the methodology behind his buy-in is to keep his mines staffed and operating 24/7. That’s where the money is, mining. And that’s his motivation. That said, who cares what his motivation is, if it keeps Pilots in the air then that is a good thing.
Buying an airline to ensure continuity of service seems a bloody expensive way of going about business...
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I mentioned part ownership. Buying into the airline ensures he gets a say. Contracts can be broken. Virgin Australia had many contracts in place, those people are now listed as creditors and have been stiffed. Andrew is a billionaire also, billionaires usually have money to burn. He would be buying ‘peace of mind’. And it doesn’t mean he can’t still have some contracts in place with other entities such as QF, Cobham et al. It’s all speculative and I’m just offering up a hypothesis to address why a mining billionaire might be interested in buying or buying into a dud airline. His interests certainly wouldn’t be in flying a once per week service from Brisbane to Longreach in summer so that retiree’s could admire old 747’s in 45 degree heat! And an investment of $50, $100, $200m is loose change to this bloke.
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TCAS. Read my post again. I never said he was interested in keeping Pilots in the air. I said he might be interested in keeping his mines operating by part owning an airline. That would be a bi-product of where his primary interests lay. A bonus though for people looking to fly planes for a living.
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The AFR has an article today "confirming" that Virgin will come out the other side, albeit in a different and slimmed down form.
https://www.afr.com/chanticleer/virg...0200501-p54oyz
https://www.afr.com/chanticleer/virg...0200501-p54oyz
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The AFR has an article today "confirming" that Virgin will come out the other side, albeit in a different and slimmed down form.
https://www.afr.com/chanticleer/virg...0200501-p54oyz
https://www.afr.com/chanticleer/virg...0200501-p54oyz
https://www.afr.com/chanticleer/virg...0200501-p54oyz
May 2, 2020 – 12.00am
It is now apparent Virgin will survive under new ownership and continue to provide robust competition to Qantas.
Before the Virgin Australia collapse last month your Rooster warned the insolvent airline could end up in the same sort of messy liquidation as Ansett Airlines in 2001.
This dire prediction is turning out to be totally wrong. It is now apparent Virgin will survive under new ownership and continue to provide robust competition to Qantas in the domestic market.
Administrator Vaughan Strawbridge from Deloitte still has to find a buyer but it is clear that a deal can be done once the $1.99 billion unsecured debt owed to bondholders is either converted to equity or written down to 2¢ in the dollar.
Some close observers of the insolvency process believe a market solution could involve as little as $300 million in working capital being pumped into the business. The proviso to this is Strawbridge having tough negotiations over airport leases and airline leases.
There are many reasons why the Virgin collapse is totally different to the Ansett implosion which put 16,000 people out of work and left Australia's transport infrastructure in a mess for years.
First, Ansett went under with no money in the bank. Steve Parbery, who with David Crawford was an adviser to the Howard government on the Ansett collapse, says there was barely enough money to last one weekend.
Virgin went into administration with more than $500 million in cash. Its board of directors was conservative and prudent.
They made sure there was more than enough money to cover the $450 million in liabilities owed to the company's 10,000 employees.
When Ansett went bust it owed $800 million to its employees. The government ended up covering this debt through the Howard government's creation of a scheme called the General Employee Entitlements and Redundancy Scheme (GEERS).
GEERS was replaced by the Fair Entitlements Guarantee (FEG) scheme in 2012. It sits in the background as a reminder that there is a $450 million debt that must be covered by the federal government if Virgin goes into liquidation.
Ansett was so badly run, so complex and so poorly prepared for collapse that there was really nothing of substance for the administrators to sell. Parbery says its best asset was an investment in property at Sydney Airport.
It sounds bizarre but there could hardly be a better time for an airline to go into administration. COVID-19 means most of its planes have been mothballed, no one is buying tickets and the largest secured creditors – airline lessors – are not in a strong bargaining position.
The new owners of Virgin will have a perfect opportunity to restructure the business by reducing the numbers of planes it leases and likely cutting the workforce by about 25 per cent. The loss of 2500 jobs will be devastating for those concerned but the accompanying chart shows why this is necessary.
The federal government clearly wants Virgin to remain a full service airline but the company was unable to make money from this strategy under former chief executive John Borghetti.
In its earlier iteration as Virgin Blue, the business was consistently profitable under chief executive Brett Godfrey. But it is unlikely Prime Minister Scott Morrison will be happy for Virgin to return to being solely a discount airline.
The government's adviser on the Virgin collapse, former Macquarie Group CEO Nicholas Moore, has the tricky task of assessing all the bids and making recommendations that fit the national interest.
Whoever takes over the Virgin cockpit not only will have to meet the requirements of the government, they will have to fight tooth and nail against Qantas, a company with strong free cash flow and double the market share.
The question is: to what extent will the government intervene to ensure Qantas does not radically expand its market share and capitalise on Virgin's cathartic change in ownership?
Virgin won't be a repeat of Ansett
May 2, 2020 – 12.00am
It is now apparent Virgin will survive under new ownership and continue to provide robust competition to Qantas.
Before the Virgin Australia collapse last month your Rooster warned the insolvent airline could end up in the same sort of messy liquidation as Ansett Airlines in 2001.
This dire prediction is turning out to be totally wrong. It is now apparent Virgin will survive under new ownership and continue to provide robust competition to Qantas in the domestic market.
Administrator Vaughan Strawbridge from Deloitte still has to find a buyer but it is clear that a deal can be done once the $1.99 billion unsecured debt owed to bondholders is either converted to equity or written down to 2¢ in the dollar.
Some close observers of the insolvency process believe a market solution could involve as little as $300 million in working capital being pumped into the business. The proviso to this is Strawbridge having tough negotiations over airport leases and airline leases.
There are many reasons why the Virgin collapse is totally different to the Ansett implosion which put 16,000 people out of work and left Australia's transport infrastructure in a mess for years.
First, Ansett went under with no money in the bank. Steve Parbery, who with David Crawford was an adviser to the Howard government on the Ansett collapse, says there was barely enough money to last one weekend.
Virgin went into administration with more than $500 million in cash. Its board of directors was conservative and prudent.
They made sure there was more than enough money to cover the $450 million in liabilities owed to the company's 10,000 employees.
When Ansett went bust it owed $800 million to its employees. The government ended up covering this debt through the Howard government's creation of a scheme called the General Employee Entitlements and Redundancy Scheme (GEERS).
GEERS was replaced by the Fair Entitlements Guarantee (FEG) scheme in 2012. It sits in the background as a reminder that there is a $450 million debt that must be covered by the federal government if Virgin goes into liquidation.
Ansett was so badly run, so complex and so poorly prepared for collapse that there was really nothing of substance for the administrators to sell. Parbery says its best asset was an investment in property at Sydney Airport.
It sounds bizarre but there could hardly be a better time for an airline to go into administration. COVID-19 means most of its planes have been mothballed, no one is buying tickets and the largest secured creditors – airline lessors – are not in a strong bargaining position.
The new owners of Virgin will have a perfect opportunity to restructure the business by reducing the numbers of planes it leases and likely cutting the workforce by about 25 per cent. The loss of 2500 jobs will be devastating for those concerned but the accompanying chart shows why this is necessary.
The federal government clearly wants Virgin to remain a full service airline but the company was unable to make money from this strategy under former chief executive John Borghetti.
In its earlier iteration as Virgin Blue, the business was consistently profitable under chief executive Brett Godfrey. But it is unlikely Prime Minister Scott Morrison will be happy for Virgin to return to being solely a discount airline.
The government's adviser on the Virgin collapse, former Macquarie Group CEO Nicholas Moore, has the tricky task of assessing all the bids and making recommendations that fit the national interest.
Whoever takes over the Virgin cockpit not only will have to meet the requirements of the government, they will have to fight tooth and nail against Qantas, a company with strong free cash flow and double the market share.
The question is: to what extent will the government intervene to ensure Qantas does not radically expand its market share and capitalise on Virgin's cathartic change in ownership?
Last edited by Senior Pilot; 2nd May 2020 at 08:14. Reason: Add url and quote
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So around 25% of the workforce could be cut according to the Financial Review. Maybe Scurrah and the administrators should stop pushing the ‘no planned redundancies’ narrative when in reality it’s up to the new owners as to the direction the company takes. False hope does no one any good.
I also think that those who believe redundancies aren’t a possibility at QF group are delusional. Just look at Air NZ. 300 jet pilots and 100 regional sacked this week.
I also think that those who believe redundancies aren’t a possibility at QF group are delusional. Just look at Air NZ. 300 jet pilots and 100 regional sacked this week.
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I have tears streaming from eyes over that! That was gold!
I really needed that laugh with everything going on. Thank you.
Hopefully they wont do a BG and try and track the mastermind down..............
I really needed that laugh with everything going on. Thank you.
Hopefully they wont do a BG and try and track the mastermind down..............
Last edited by Servo; 2nd May 2020 at 09:21.
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So around 25% of the workforce could be cut according to the Financial Review. Maybe Scurrah and the administrators should stop pushing the ‘no planned redundancies’ narrative when in reality it’s up to the new owners as to the direction the company takes. False hope does no one any good.
I also think that those who believe redundancies aren’t a possibility at QF group are delusional. Just look at Air NZ. 300 jet pilots and 100 regional sacked this week.
I also think that those who believe redundancies aren’t a possibility at QF group are delusional. Just look at Air NZ. 300 jet pilots and 100 regional sacked this week.
