Lol. See, Toruk gets it. He's thinking like an exec! :ok: :E

And you'd want priority 24Y/P112 with that, I suppose?

Which side ends up with the $3bn cash reserve?

The question becomes what assets does each arm have?

Private equity operates on a very simple model despite the claims of "masters of the universe" territory:

1: What cash reserves does the company have?
2: What property assets does the company have?
3: What saleable assets does the company have?
4: Does the company currently have, or has had in the near past, a high profile or reputation that has taken a downturn?
5: Is the market price depressed?

If you get the right answers to questions 4 and 5 then the company is ripe for a takeover and PR campaign to resell it (the "exit strategy") at a price above what you bought it for.

So you proceed to buy the company on the basis of low price (5), start a marketing campaign around how you are going to revive a national brand because you're such great business people prepared to take the hard decisions that former management clearly have not (4) and whilst that campaign is underway you use (1) to pay off the interest on teh debt taken on to buy the company with any remainder being used to pay your "management service fees" with additional funds raised from selling (2) and (3) also being offset by those fees.

Then you refloat it, get the money out of the country asap (overnight if possible) so the ATO can't get their hands on any of it and you leave the stripped company to wobble toward an uncertain future.

Does QF fit that bill???...

Yeah Romo, about sums it up really...
Oh what about the backhanders..Na....sorry, commissions...Na...errr...bonuses???..hmm.."Exit fees"??
Sorry trying to find a word that describes snout extraction
that cant be misconstrued for corruption,
for management types and the board members for endorsing
a wonderful deal that provides such wonderful value to the
shareholders.

International.Domestic
 

A distinction without a difference

No one has mentioned the millions of $$$ that will be spent on advertising!!! International and domestic will have two different messages so will that mean two different advertising agencies???
As someone said... TAA and Qantas again which the government of the day said could be operated more efficiently if they combined!!!

The Smartest Men in The Room
 

There is no one on the Qantas Board with Airline Experience.
There is virtually no one in EXco that has much experience either
Yet they come up with this solution:duplicate everything and double the administration costs
They should be jelly beans for Cadburys,not running a bloody airline.

I think you are missing the point of the exercise. The airline is being set up to be sold. They are working around the Sale Act.

And why would they be doing this instead of actually running the airline? Because they are going to be very very rich!

The last Act of a Rudd labor government will be to amend the Qantas Sale Act and facilitate the sale of international. The bid wil be made and accepted very quickly after that.

My guess is that Gillard will be gone on Tuesday. Once the right wing NSW Labor pigs get their hands on the levers, the plundering will start. Then watch a steady stream of privatisations and looting right up until they are forced to hold a Federal election.

Unfettered Poker machines, online gambling, the sale of Qantas and anything not nailed down to private interests, more Chinese guest workers and the destruction of the Australian middle classes.

Coming to a suburb near you.

What are you drinking on Saturday nights Sunfish? Your early Sunday morning posts are becoming quite nasty.

Don't worry about that comment Sunfish. The people of New Orleans new Katrina was coming with much destruction and also did NOTHING as the BIG PICTURE unfolded in front of them. :ok:
Oh please The The, there is no need to tell it the way it is. :D

Direct anywhere, unlike you, I'm over Sixty, and I've lived long enough, and seen enough of human nature to be unsurprised by the depths of greed, depravity and corruption that humans will stoop to.

We have a problem which is gradually being recognised today, across the western world, of leaders who promise one thing, but do the exact reverse once elected or appointed to high office. The cause is our conscious decision to appoint people who are "qualified" and who have "experience" and to avoid discrimination on racial, religious or gender grounds.

Unfortunately me old China, that means that the old measurement dimension of "Character" has been ejected from our lexicon and the result is that across the western world we have elected, promoted or appointed some pretty smelly turds as far as character goes.

By way of example, Craig Thompson, if the allegations are true, Dominique Strauss Kahn at the IMF, perhaps, unless I am mistaken, the recent retiree from Airservices Australia, the late Richard Pratt (who ran an illegal packaging cartel) and sundry other politicians, officials and "Leaders" on all sides of the political spectrum who proceed to work for their own good and satifaction to the detriment of the general community.

Then of course there are the "merchant banks" who are full of ****s, including a smelly selection I had to deal with while unwinding some Sixty million dollars worth of tax minimisation schemes. Then of course there are the multitude of commercial deals and attempted deals I am aware of but you have never heard of, nor the day to day attempts at financial market rigging going on in New York and Europe as we speak.

This article, plus the comments section, might give you some idea what you are facing:

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/25/op...rssnyt&emc=rss

All in all I have a pretty low opinion of the current crop of leaders and it takes me more than a Sunday morning listening to "The God Who Sings" on the radio to brighten me up.

So No, nothing that happens to Qantas or in Canberra would surprise me. I occasionally get the mail on who is sleeping with who and who isn't. Craig Thompson isn't on his own, but at least if the allegations are true, he is availing himself of the female sex. For all you and I know, Qantas management may being playing footsies with any number of people of either sex in some very strange beds. Nothing would surprise me.

To put that another way, Directanywhere, I learned a long time ago that truth is stranger, way way stranger, than fiction*.

Happy flying and don't trouble your head too much.


* And I learned that by confiding to a gorgeous young nubile female professional collegue in a highly respected management consulting firm, that I thought our boss was a no good, lying, cheating offensive old drunk. Little did I know she was sleeping with him at the time.

I still don't get it. The value is in domestic, not international. Buyers would be clamboring for domestic and the route structures. International doesn't seem to have any value to me. Can Qantas get around the sale act if they execs sell domestic and keep international only to fold it at a later date when it is "no longer profitable" into Jetstar?

I don't follow your train of thought here Sunny, because we now elect women, non-Caucasians and non-Christians we can't judge their character?

I think it's got nothing to do with the fact our parliament is finally looking like some sort of demographic representation of our society but is more to do with the fact the media is working on the sound bite strategy so that we have NO IDEA what their character is like. It's also much less about voting for your local member and more about voting for a party. These two things I have noticed change in the political landscape in my relatively short lifetime.

Secondly, I'd say the fact we seem to have seemingly more controversy these days is not only due to the fact our pollies are worse but also that there is much, much more media scrutiny (ie; they are looking for a tabloid shock story). I find it hard to believe that the pollies of the 60s and 70s didn't have their hands in some pretty unsavoury cookie jars as well, as you said it's human nature to abuse power.

International flying 80% plus load factors, the stand out performer of the group (as attested by the last CEO in 2008) and the beneficiary of most frequent flyer programs? The benefactor of a globally recognised brand?

Reduce the costs and grow it and it would be one of the most profitable airlines in the world.

Come on, don't buy that basket case crap. International is where it's at, and it's what the mexicans are trying to get their grubby hands on.

BB is already manufacturing the arse cream, he knows a lot of Aussies are about to be shafted by the big pineapple and he sees it as a quick way to make a buck.

The plan has always been to talk it down for years, break up the 'group' claim it's a lost cause and pick it up as cheap as chips. (check out that share price!)

Suddenly they need 777s to compete and those 787s that domestic will never get. The long haul agreement was crushed at the original Qantas' expense by arbitration and the 'A' scalers are at Jetstar (forever). There won't be a Qantas as they knew it to return to as it simply won't exist. Those pesky engineers are now something for domestic to deal with. Along with probably most of the unionised workforce. They'll be shipped across to domestic which doesn't have the same exposure to globalisation and can afford to pay a little bit extra as it's competing in the same marketplace. Besides, the government will probably prop up domestic if push came to shove.

International can now use MROs and labour hire as the naughty unionised Aussies are part of the domestic Qantas. Master plan complete. Just the question of where the frames will all be parked.

Reads like a play book.

Red Q isn't a failure, it's the future Qantas international operation being setup by stealth at existing Qantas' expense ready for the takeover by the boys club.

Do you think if the little man cocked up so much so quickly he wouldn't already be already shown the door? It's all part of the master plan. Why are the institutional investors not barking mad. They know what the plan is and they will reap gazillions from it.

Joyce maybe immoral, but he is cunning and his masters far more so.

The process is an attempt to mimic a US chapter 11 style bankruptcy reorganization. In essence, the US chapter 11 "loophole" has become the ultimate weapon of choice against labour, allowing contracts to be torn up, with the unions having a gun pointed at their head.

This was all covered in the book Hard Landing: The Epic Contest for Power and Profits That Plunged the Airlines into Chaos by Thomas Petzinger Jr and has been going on since the 80's when deregulation allowed the unscrupulous to raid whatever they could from the airlines.

from wikipedia: Chapter 11
In the US it also has the added bonus of destroying employees pension entitlements, removing that liability from the restructured airline balance sheet. The net result in the US was a very small number of executives and investors in US airlines worked away with hundreds of millions, if not billions, and the airline employees were decimated.

It's simply an accounting device to screw over employees, and probably shareholders. This engineered crisis has been a long time in the making.

Interesting article in Arabian business today about Emirates discussing buying 30% of Qantas domestic.

Qantas mulls licence split amid Emirates interest - ArabianBusiness.com

And Goblin what are you blokes going to do about it? There is such a thing a people power, are you blokes just going to let this happen or are you starting to launch a fight? Like us 89ers you can walk off the job, and stay off the job, try to replace engineers, pilots, ground staff, CC, etc over a weekend, over a week, over a month, over six months. You cannot. Yes we were just the pilots, but bring the whole box and dice in, get someone who can lead, and you might just save the company, in fact run the company yourselves, give 110% and you might just have yourselves a very viable company. Lie down and you blokes are finished, do you really want to work for the Arabs? In your own country? Seems to me you blokes have already accepted that your company is buggered, how about you grow a pair, and start fighting for it? You saw the result when we walked off, not proud of it but the country really suffered, imagine if all of you did the same thing to save the company, actually the ball is right in your court. Use it.

teresa,

Bloody well said.:D

However, it'll never happen. Almost 25 years later, Australia has a very different caliber of humanity in the aviation fraternity. Unfortunately, if one ever stands in a trench full of your own colleagues and then scramble out and run towards the enemy, don't expect anyone to jump out with you. One would definitely get shot in the back.