It is an acquired taste Galdian, but it is different to the usual so I say let him play!

[QUOTE=Vorsicht;10826336]There was a good interview with JB a few years back. He was presenting to a forum at Sydney uni I think. Anyway, at one point he went on to speak with great pride how his father used to challenge him to sell a specific dish to customers in his restaurant when he was a boy. Usually the steak because it was the most expensive. JB spoke with great pride about the lessons he learnt about selling people something they didn’t really want. And that really is all you need to know about JB, In his own words, he’s pretty much just a salesman, and a damn good one. So good he managed to con multiple major airlines into tipping billions into a loss making business, he conned his board into believing he knew what he was doing, for a period he conned his employees as well, and he definitely conned the media during his tenure. Only one person called him out and that was Chris Luxon, when all the time he was just an upstart mailboy with some sales experience. He used to take great pride in telling anyone that would listen that he only had high school education. He truly was an imposter, that pulled the wool,over everyone’s eyes for 10 years.[/QUOTE

interview happens to be sponsored by Deloitte in 2013

He can play to his hearts content, I'm happy to hear and consider whatever he wishes (like us all) to pontificate.

Just too much static/crap around what he's saying - so can't be bothered reading.

Maybe it's just me! ;)
Cheers

Section 28- BE seems to type in the manner that a pontificating geriatric English public school tw@t who has just consumed 3 bottles of Wine would speak, i.e. drunken stream of nonsense.

But that's just my take.:confused:

Thank you! The interpretation is truly appreciated.

Isn't that why you are paid the big bucks as a member of the board to have those fights? In reality it's all water under the bridge anyway as the major shareholders wanted Borghetti hence the Air NZ departure and the failed attempted to have Borghetti moved on earlier.

non -state Actor, true. The buck really does stop with the directors. They have to deal with whatever comes up. A public fight over Borghetti would have stuffed the company share price anyway. Fights like that are very rare because of the damage they do. That is why you need to be extremely careful of what you are getting into when you are offered a Board seat and be ready to vote with your feet if you don’t like what’s going on. Only one guy from the ANZ had the brains to see where this was heading and the balls to leave.

EB and the rest are wishing they never heard of the airline because there are few excuses for what happened in my opinion. Borghetti should never have been a Director.

My Board beat the crap out of me on a number of occasions in the process of educating me about what my job was and how it’s different from their job. Pity no one taught EB the same lesson.

A claimed to be former CEO who had the crap beaten out of them by the Board, and now has over 8000 posts on an anonymous bulletin board.

Yeah, that's pretty funny.

I’m retired. You amuse me.

Fair comment though, what was the business you were CEO of ?

Sunfish started with HIH then One.Tel finally burying Dick Smith.

Phew, lucky they didn’t do that then!!! :E

Bull wink le, sadly yes.

If this turns out to be true, then no wonder Virgin was not bailed out by the government, that would be condoning and rewarding bad behaviour. The only reason that it has been found out was because of COVID-19, they would have got away with it otherwise. However, if Virgin ended up completely bankrupt then why would the government bail out QANTAS when at that point they would effectively have no serious competition. It would make sense to me that the only viable option remaining option would be to help REX out a bit in order to prevent QANTAS from securing a monopoly rather than letting Virgin get away with misleading and deceptive conduct.

As opposed to rewarding good behavior, like bailing out a foreign owned and controlled airline who claimed they were a day or two away from bankruptcy, and then breaks the law by announcing an expansion without briefing the ASX first..

Scurrah has a track record of playing ducks and drakes with his announcements, that's for sure and certain. We had the saga of the 750 'rightsizing' program, announced with all due hoopla in August 2019. The rightsizing was, according to Virgin's ASX announcement,

​​​​​​On 7 November 2019, while talking up the turn around that he's got underway, Scurrah tells Elizabeth Knight of the Sydney Morning Herald that

Christmas comes and goes, 750 jobs do not.

Come late February 2020, Scurrah is announcing the worst half year results since the GFC (all pre-coronavirus). In the ASX publicity release we're told that,

On track, roger that. Curious then that as at 31 December 2019 employee costs are up by over $42 million (more than 6 percent).

On closer inspection, buried in the notes at the bottom of the second last page of the Interim Financial Report we read

So six months after the announced rightsizing less than 20 percent of the targeted number had actually left and more than 50 percent of the target hadn't even been identified and this program was 'on track'. You'd hate to see what a program that was off the rails looked like.

Given the numbers touted, Virgin were working on an average of $100K salary per employee being exited and around $38K per payout. For the initiative to be 'cash flow positive to the Group for FY20' they would have needed to have had the whole thing wrapped up by the end of February, early March 2020. So, so much for that commitment.

And just by the bye, that rightsizing program is touted in the VA Notes prospectus as a key element of 'Virgin's business focus'; that one program is the source of the single largest EBIT improvement for the Group. You might think that it might have been accorded some proper stewardship.

Why did PS purchase $100k VAH shares on market 2 weeks after VAH announced that S&P gave a negative COVID19 outlook and 5 weeks before administration. There appeared to be no reason for the purchase based on the information at hand in all media, including that media provided by VAH. Was it a confidence trick? A con? From a con man? And where was PS’ due diligence before accepting his position as CEO. Is PS angling for politics? He will get the vote from many minions at VA.

Yes, and beyond the Pollyanna spin, the chronology is instructive.

• 13 March. 'The Group currently has a cash position in excess of $1 billion' (ASX announcement)
• 18 March. 'We are well positioned to weather this storm.' (Paul Scurrah, CEO)
• 17 April. 'We are fighting to survive on a day to day basis.' (Stuart Aggs, COO)
• 21 April. 'Our board made a very courageous decision last night to put the company into voluntary administration ...' (Paul Scurrah)

Elapsed time: 39 days.

If the reports that they went into administration with only around $150 million ($30 million in free cash, $120 million in restricted cash) left in the kitty are true, that's a cash burn of around $22 million a day. That is truly incandescent for a business that had stood 80 percent of its workforce down for at least half of that elapsed period; for 10 of the 39 days they were only operating two flights a day, Sydney-Melbourne return.

Based on their FY20-H1 interim report, when the business was running at full tilt, it was burning around $23 million a day so something doesn't add up there.

What triggered PS to buy $100k of VAH shares 2 weeks after VAH reported S&P’s COVID19 downgrade and 5 weeks before VA was put into administration?

What DD did PS do before he accepted his position at the ‘doomed’ VA and what triggered him to by $100k worth of VAH shares during COVID19 and just weeks before ‘voluntary’ administration?

Anyone's guess but the purchase was likely more related to the lifting of the blackout period on shares purchases subsequent to the release of the half-year results. He made a similar size purchase after the blackout period after announcing the full year results in 2019.

He might have been backing himself to persuade the government to hand over $1.4 billion. I seem to recall that he and Keith Neate assumed control of the Velocity board in March. Some other convoluted play going on there too perhaps.