Don’t get your hopes up.

‘They companies involved in these bids are concentrating on their absolute number one priority............

.........Which is their exit strategy from the business about three to five years from now.

They are not long term investors, except perhaps Temasek. Their objective is to clean out the business of any obvious stupidities, take or “acquire” all the businesses cash, load it up with humongous amounts of cheap (at present) debt and then flog shares in this lipstick bedecked pig to mum and dads super funds or stupid institutional buyers, making a cool billion or two in the float.

Unfortunately QF management can kill their float plans stone dead any time it wants to. Just wait till the float is underwritten and announced, then start aggressive discounting and he float fails.

My guess, unfortunately, is that Virgin is for the knackers yard because I can’t see a successful exit strategy for investors. Furthermore QF management are blameless.

The reality is that it's dollars only that drives this forward. Any of these bidders will be looking at a quick turnover and sale because that's the way they operate. Does not matter what the business is.

I wouldn't mind betting that all the "data room" examination has provided is an idea of the true costs of VAH - bidders will run a mile at taking a percentage of the debt, staff agreements, existing leases etc etc into the future.

All they have to do is provide knock down bids that won't satisfy anyone and the show is finished.

The sooner this is rolled over and a fresh new entrant can get up, the better. It won't provide jobs for everyone, but it's a start.

The only doubt in my mind is who will the new owners be ?

With the Administrators telling the bidders this afternoon to "cool their jets" for another 24 hours, the suspense must almost be too much for Carla who will by now be frothing at the mouth to find out if she'll get the gig. :E

According to the AFR, if Bain did get up, Hrdlicka may be the Chairman, rather than CEO. If Scurrah did then stay on as CEO, it would be an interesting dynamic between the two.

Wow!!! If that happens I wonder how long it would take before the administrators are called in again.

I’ve listen to every company podcast and what’s pathetic are their noses growing each time, and by shear coincidence VA have moved into the same building the administrators own! Come on, are you all that blind?

Our managers had sent out surveys over the last 5 yrs and for what? OUR negative responses have done absolutely nothing, your still steered us onto the reef, well done flight ops, well done and I bet you’ll still keep your jobs whilst those who warned you get the chop. I can holy hope you join us all in the dole queue where you belong.

It’s a bit more family friendly I gather than being CEO.

Well played.

Even if Scuz was retained, he would be on a very tight leash. No one messes with Carla.
One comes from Darthmouth, the other..... well, that's the point isn't it.

Really? Tell that to AJ who gave her the boot over the JQ HK fiasco. She knows as much about running an airline as she does about dairy farming.

Err.........in both cases that would be zero.

Think too many being far too harsh on the dear lady - surely just a case of cream rising to the top yet again?? :=

Of course other substances can rise also. ;)

Cheers

Now that JQ/QF are ramping up their schedules for June/July, are Virgin able to follow suit given their administration status?

It will depend on whether the government keeps subsidising certain routes plus what course the administration actually ends up taking.

In any case, I would have thought an immediate restart by Virgin is problematic.

End of the day it is a business, so, if he does well that's just being a good businessman. It happens in other industry's and it seems to be OK.

They can but they are on their own. They probably don’t have the ability to ‘test the waters’ as such across the market as that will involve red ink. It will just accelerate the demise.

It’s pretty clear now if they went to Canberra asking for another 4-6 weeks of subsidised routes, otherwise it will go to the wall, won’t work. Canberra will let it sink.

I wonder if Bain would let it go to liquidation or step up cash before it reaches that point, which is sometime within the next three weeks.

whats within 3 weeks?

I think he's referencing these dates posted in another thread,

1. June 11th -Government subsidies ceases.
2. June 12th -Binding bids.
3. June 16th -Administrators become liable for Aircraft leases.
4. June 30th- Administrators close sale, liquidate or have received further funding to operate.

Is that time line even achievable for a sale? Surely there is no company that could do due diligence in that tight time frame. We are not talking 10 or 20 million it’s billions on the table.

Yup! Something that just hasn’t seemed right to me from the beginning. Nearly $7billion in liabilities and virtually no market. Certainly nothing like it was before.

I’m desperately sorry for all my VA friends and colleagues, and I hope my instincts are wrong, but how do you make a small fortune in aviation?

Am I missing something?