Neville, competition is fierce among many carriers in Europe, legacy and non-legacy.

Do you really think that Qantas, a company listed on the Stock Exchange can "hide figures"? Come on, that is fraud. To use a poor Cup Day analogy, the horse has bolted. Surely the future path of QF is currently being laid out by FWA, subject to tweaking by the Unions and QF.

Company Fraud
 

The corporate world is littered with the carcasses of companies that have been less than forthcoming with accurate EBITs.Many of these inaccuracies have been discovered by journalists who posess the skill,ethics and morality required to do so.

It is called segment reporting Tallest poppy. The company define the segment, they allocate costs any way they want.

The "mainline international" part of the business is NOT a reported segment. The loss is as referred to in the senate enquiry more of an internal number.

Folks, the accounts of any large business such as QF are out there for all to see. If you can highlight any inaccuracies, I am sure accountants, shareholders, and regulators would be very pleased to see FACTS.

Until facts are produced, it's just idle speculation

Please......go on.......provide facts.....

One Acronym
 

Enron.
Perhaps two acronyms~HIH.
Your naivete is what allows corporations to believe that they can be naughty and get away with it.Corruption at a corporate level is what essentially began the GFC.

Once again, show me the FACTS


There aren't any, are there?

If Fair Work Australia aren't given any REAL FACTS, QF wins, and it's future is neatly laid out by FWA. It's as simple as that.

Skin in the game
 

We want the facts to come out also.

Can't get QF to expose facts & figures pertinent to the workers 67 questions though....

CaptCloudBuster, can you not see that it is too late?

Fair Work Australia is now laying out how QF will be for decades.

I agree, we are more than likely screwed.

I don't agree with your argument that there are no facts camouflaged which would expose the Mainline loss for what it really is.

Tallest Poppy:
Look at the Senate inquiry in detail and especially the Engineers 61 questions available elsewhere.

One TINY point:

Qantas hedges fuel. If the hedge price is lower than the spot price, Jetstar gets the fuel with no surcharge from Qantas.

If the spot price is lower than the hedge price, Jetstar gets the spot price.

And the list goes on and on and on and on. There is undoubted price scamming twixt the two.

The CSM on my last flight had Jetstar F/A's on a LAX pattern!

This is Enron stuff - no doubt about it.

Tallest Poppy:

I'm afraid you should stick to flying and get a qualified accountant to do your tax return.

There are typically THREE sets of accounts in any business.

- The Tax accounts.

- The statutory accounts - which is what is required by the ASX.

- and finally the confidential management accounts these are broken up by segment and contain the really crucial confidential warts and all data, like contribution margins, that are essential for the running of the business.

The ASX accounts are a very broad brush - they provide a consolidated picture of the business, not the minutiae of all the accounting cost allocation policies employed and the amounts involved.

Without knowing exactly how Qantas has allocated costs the statement "Jetstar made a profit and International lost $200 million" is meaningless hot air. Especially as there are numerous stories on pprune and elsewhere alleging that Jetstar is getting access to significant cost savings through dodgy cost allocation.

You should also be aware that this isn't "Fraud" at all. The statutory accounts will no doubt be pure and correct as the driven snow. Joyce simply makes assertions but refuses to provide the management accounting data to back them up.

I'm speaking as someone who has the scars from airline cost allocation fights between subsidiaries and the mainline. There are stacks of assumptions involved and the fighting between segment managers over "their fair share" of costs can be pretty brutal.

Sunfish,

Dead right about the 3 sets of books!!!! And I worked for the ATO in the late 1960s and early 1970s!!

Mike


There are typically THREE sets of accounts in any business.

- The Tax accounts.

- The statutory accounts - which is what is required by the ASX.

- and finally the confidential management accounts these are broken up by segment and contain the really crucial confidential warts and all data, like contribution margins, that are essential for the running of the business.

Yes. I am coming to the opinion that there is something very dodgy going on at QF. There is a bigger game in play that is yet to be revealed.

1. Firstly they have been caught with some questionable cost allocations in the past.

2. They were involved in the biggest collusion ever known to man. Allegedly all orchestrated by one man. I am not so gullible to believe that to be true. I for one cannot see how one guy could single handed organise such a scam within a company.

3. The Australian Share holders association was publically questioning their accounting at the AGM.

4. It is the nature of aviation. I have seen to many companies big and small in aviation who are just shams, tax scams, or a front for something else. Very very very few aviation companies in Australia are actually run as a legitimate open aviation business. The owners/managers are often milking something off somewhere and the aviation business is paying the cost for that corruption of the aviation business. The problem with aviation as a business is that since the capital costs are so high they often have very high turnovers. So people can have little corruption scams going on and it is absorbed by the aviation business. I might add that some of these things are totally legitimate business practices, however they are corrupting the aviation business and provide a front for the owners to cry poor when in fact they are diverting the money elsewhere.

5. Do you think it is slightly suspicious that former QF management were going to get paid alot of money by telling everyone to sell their shares and secondly is it not interesting that former QF management had a stake in a aircraft leasing company?

AFR back page Saturday Nov 12 2011

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(Click to expand)
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Leigh Clifford comes from the mining industry where the general public don't directly purchase the product. Those who do purchase the product are likely to be corporate types who simply look at the bottom line. Image, whilst not irrelevant, is hardly likely to harm the bottom line too much.

Aviation is a different story. The competitors have seen this weakness, and intend to exploit it for all its worth.

Fed Sec, you might want to stick to IR. If the Board decided to share it with the investors, then you might be a little stuffed for replacement or expansion aircraft and other assets... not sure you want that.

Another article in The Age although not by a journalist. Bruce Hearn Mackinnon, a lecturer at Deakin Uni.

Qantas Grounding | Fair Work Halts Qantas Grounding

Do you seriously believe they cannot? Do you honestly want to go over the histories of the rotting carcasses of various companies around the world which did exactly that? These are companies whose executives are doing prison time in the USA, for example. Or whose executives managed to retire to a life of luxury in Majorca and avoid extradition until they died.

"My administration will do everything in our power to end the days of cooking the books, shading the truth and breaking our laws."

George W Bush, President of the United States of America, 2002 Speech to the New York Stock Exchange, Wall Street. Fat lot of notice they took of GW's speech. See below.

Actually, no they are not. It is naivety in the extreme to think they are. Qantas have point blank refused to have all their books forensically examined. They have offered nothing more than a careful selection. This should not surprise anyone at all. You need look no further than the huge accounting frauds of recent years. In fact, corporate accountants freely admit that they're only going on the information they're given, and whether or not that bears any resemblance to reality within the corporation is another matter entirely.

"FACTS", as you say, are hard to come by until someone removes power to the shredder, and even that doesn't usually happen before the receivers or administrators of a large corporation move in after bankruptcy.

A small selection of corporate scandals since Enron, Arthur Anderson accounting 2002, and a total train-wreck of other corporations around the world:

MCI-Worldcom, 2002. Accounting scandal. False reporting cost investors $100 billion. In 2005, former CEO sentenced to 25 years imprisonment.

Rite Aid, 2004. Accounting scandal. Vice Chairman imprisoned for 10 years, released after serving 6.

Shell, 2004. Deliberately overstated oil reserves. Chairman forced to resign. 17 million pound fine. $450 million lawsuit against company won by shareholders.

Tyco retrial, 2005. Chief Executive and CFO sentenced to minimum 8 years, maximum 25 years imprisonment. In 2007, shareholders awarded $3 billion in class action settlement.

Brocade Communications, 2005. CEO charged with stockmarket fraud. After trials and appeals, he was eventually convicted and sentenced to imprisonment and a $15 million fine. He is still in prison.

Madoff Investment Securities/Wealth Management, 2008. The Wall Street firm defrauded investors of $65 billion. In 2009, Chairman sentenced to 150 years imprisonment.

And mate, this is just the tip of the corporate, public company, stockmarket listed, shareholder-owned iceberg! We could go for many pages!

DutchRoll,

They are all US/foreign companies. I know you stated that it is the tip of the iceberg, but a few closer to home would include:

1. HIH
2. OneTel
3. ABC Learning Group
4. Storm Financial Group
5. Rubicon Property Group
6. Ansett

The list can go on, but I think people will get the picture. It's not companies that go bad. It's the directors that get greedy.

Nepotism,

A great article, and just an extract from it below.

The workers may not have lost any pay,but around 60,000 passengers
were screwed over for a few days, a brilliant move AJ.