Ansett had no management or....
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Ansett had no management or....
aap 17.09.01
Ansett's new administrators are shocked at the extent of bad management at Australia's second largest airline before its collapse with liabilities of up to $2 billion.
"We just don't know where the money has gone," administrator Mark Mentha, from Andersen, told reporters.
"There is no accounting in terms of where it has been spent, there are no books and records that can give us any tracing on where our assets are, who owes us money and who we owe money to."
Andersen (formerly Arthur Andersen) took over as administrator late Monday after the resignation of PricewaterhouseCoopers, and said it immediately realised the airline had had "very little management" under its parent company Air New Zealand.
"Not only that, but it has not had any management for any considerable period of time," said Mr Mentha.
"We were shocked as to the lack of financial systems to support Ansett in its own right," he said.
It was also revealed on Tuesday that Air NZ's directors withdrew up to $400 million of financial support from Ansett just hours before administrators took control of the company last week.
A letter of comfort from Air New Zealand to the Ansett board of directors, dated August 8, had guaranteed to cover the subsidiary's debts, the Australian Industrial Relations Commission (AIRC) was told.
But five weeks later, a second letter withdrew those assurances.
Mr Mentha told creditors it would be at least a week before the total assets of Ansett were known.
But he told about 2,000 Ansett workers and investors at a creditors meeting in Melbourne that his main focus was getting the airline flying again.
"Our number one priority at the moment is to stabilise this business and then put in place a rescue plan and then turn our minds to investigation issues," he told the gathering at Melbourne's Crown Casino.
Any rescue plan would need the support of all stakeholders, including Air New Zealand and the federal government.
He urged the company's 16,000 employees to maintain the spirit they had shown since the airline collapsed at 2am (AEST) last Friday, and not be dismayed by speculation about their entitlements.
One avenue the administrators are pursuing is whether Air NZ was responsible for workers' entitlements, which could top $500 million.
The federal government announced it would guarantee statutory entitlements - unpaid wages, unpaid annual leave and unpaid long service leave, plus up to eight weeks redundancy - if the two airlines could not fund them.
It will impose a $10 levy on all air tickets to help meet the costs, saying the entitlements would total more than $300 million.
But ACTU secretary Greg Combet warned any worker who had been with Ansett for more than four years would be short-changed by the government's eight-week cap on redundancy.
The unions are targeting Air NZ and have launched a bid in the Australian Industrial Relations Commission (AIRC) to force it to honour the entitlements.
Air NZ acting chairman Jim Farmer, who angrily denied his own airline would be placed into statutory management after announcing a $A1.17 billion loss for the June year, was confident Ansett's assets could meet obligations to workers.
"The assessment that has been made is that Ansett is asset rich and cash flow poor, and that is right," he said at a briefing in Auckland.
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Ansett's new administrators are shocked at the extent of bad management at Australia's second largest airline before its collapse with liabilities of up to $2 billion.
"We just don't know where the money has gone," administrator Mark Mentha, from Andersen, told reporters.
"There is no accounting in terms of where it has been spent, there are no books and records that can give us any tracing on where our assets are, who owes us money and who we owe money to."
Andersen (formerly Arthur Andersen) took over as administrator late Monday after the resignation of PricewaterhouseCoopers, and said it immediately realised the airline had had "very little management" under its parent company Air New Zealand.
"Not only that, but it has not had any management for any considerable period of time," said Mr Mentha.
"We were shocked as to the lack of financial systems to support Ansett in its own right," he said.
It was also revealed on Tuesday that Air NZ's directors withdrew up to $400 million of financial support from Ansett just hours before administrators took control of the company last week.
A letter of comfort from Air New Zealand to the Ansett board of directors, dated August 8, had guaranteed to cover the subsidiary's debts, the Australian Industrial Relations Commission (AIRC) was told.
But five weeks later, a second letter withdrew those assurances.
Mr Mentha told creditors it would be at least a week before the total assets of Ansett were known.
But he told about 2,000 Ansett workers and investors at a creditors meeting in Melbourne that his main focus was getting the airline flying again.
"Our number one priority at the moment is to stabilise this business and then put in place a rescue plan and then turn our minds to investigation issues," he told the gathering at Melbourne's Crown Casino.
Any rescue plan would need the support of all stakeholders, including Air New Zealand and the federal government.
He urged the company's 16,000 employees to maintain the spirit they had shown since the airline collapsed at 2am (AEST) last Friday, and not be dismayed by speculation about their entitlements.
One avenue the administrators are pursuing is whether Air NZ was responsible for workers' entitlements, which could top $500 million.
The federal government announced it would guarantee statutory entitlements - unpaid wages, unpaid annual leave and unpaid long service leave, plus up to eight weeks redundancy - if the two airlines could not fund them.
It will impose a $10 levy on all air tickets to help meet the costs, saying the entitlements would total more than $300 million.
But ACTU secretary Greg Combet warned any worker who had been with Ansett for more than four years would be short-changed by the government's eight-week cap on redundancy.
The unions are targeting Air NZ and have launched a bid in the Australian Industrial Relations Commission (AIRC) to force it to honour the entitlements.
Air NZ acting chairman Jim Farmer, who angrily denied his own airline would be placed into statutory management after announcing a $A1.17 billion loss for the June year, was confident Ansett's assets could meet obligations to workers.
"The assessment that has been made is that Ansett is asset rich and cash flow poor, and that is right," he said at a briefing in Auckland.
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