You'll all be glad to know Billy Boy Amelio has secured a new position with ..... OMG !!

OMGtel raising S$400 million in bid to be 4th telco service - Channel NewsAsia

Notice how they conveniently don't mention he was the former CEO of CHC.

OMG starts with an advantage:
If you follow the link of tisisnot and look at the photo:
"There is a better way,
Find it!"
(Thomas Edison)
I hope Bill is open for suggestions?

SLB

Yeesh, Bill wasn't at the head of that African charity organization for very long.

If you meant Caring for Cambodja.
That he has been doing for 13 years. See his Linkedin page.
We have to give him credit for that.

But that is the only thing for which i would have trust my money is safe with him.

SLB

D'oh! My bad, thought that was his next stop after CHC.

I think if I was Cambodian I'd tell Bill I was fine and inform him the Laotians needed his help more......

You just made my day ;) :ok:

This article makes very interesting reading on the state of the O&G business overall, but specifically the challenges faced by all the support companies within the industry. The challenges are universal to anyone in the industry, although the level of impact is affected by the specific phase of each individual project, with exploration and pre-production being particularly badly affected due to the Capital demands of this phase. Very trying times, and will take serious management and strategies by every company in order to stay the course and survive to play in the future market.

Schlumberger CEO Presentation, March 21 - Business Insider

Although CHC is challenged primarily due to the debt it is carrying, it is of equal interest to review the other publicly traded large players in the offshore field, as well as a couple of more general publicly traded helicopter operators for a comparison of the distress that is being felt by all the companies in the helicopter industry.

You will have to manually select the 1 year tab, to get a more meaningful view on the current state. It makes interesting reading and perhaps illuminates the current difficult situation in a more easily perceived manner.



https://www.google.com/finance?chdnp...M8mG0gSi1Jj4DQ

Interesting article in the Wall Street Journal today regarding the state of the offshore helicopter business and the impact on operators, leasing companies and manufacturers.

Helicopters Are Unlikely Victim of Oil Downturn - WSJ

It probably would be interesting - but you need to subscribe to read it.....

Sorry about that, Ed. It allowed me to read it when I first logged in, but won't now. It contains a lot of the discussion that is in this thread, but with quotes from senior executives from each of the companies, providing an official statement about much that is on here. It includes the numbers of parked helicopters, reduced production rates and the plans for long term storage for new airframes that will be produced but not delivered, and machines that are out of service.

Should have copied and pasted it.

Update: I actually opened the story from the WSJ page on Facebook. Maybe you can read it using that route?

Try this link for the WSJ Article. It opens from its Facebook link.

Helicopters Are Unlikely Victim of Oil Downturn - WSJ

Here you go:

The energy-industry downturn has created a huge surplus of helicopters, a sharp turnaround from two years ago when oil-and-gas companies were forced to share rides to and from far-flung oil platforms.
Operators such as CHC Group and Bristow Group, who ferry workers and cargo on behalf of the energy industry, said they had been surprised by the severity of the downturn, and don’t see any prospects for recovery until next year at the earliest.
The slump comes at a tough time for big helicopter makers such as Airbus Group SE and Textron that are introducing new models, and others such as General Electric, which paid $1.8 billion last year for Milestone Aviation Group, the largest helicopter-leasing company by sales.
Industry executives said a fifth of the 1900 helicopters serving the oil-and-gas industry worldwide are idle or underemployed, and expect this overcapacity to worsen before it improves. Helicopters used by the oil-and-gas sector account for 26 per cent of the global commercial fleet, according to AgustaWestland, a unit of Finmeccanica SpA. Helicopter operators also have tried to diversify, expanding into search and rescue missions, medical and VIP flights.
But John Mannion, a Houston-based industry consultant, said there is limited scope for redeploying helicopters to other markets or uses because customers differ in their preferences for aircraft types and configurations. For example, some aircraft are kitted out with new radar equipment, making it easier to land and take off from oil platforms in bad weather.
Helicopters that primarily fly over water are also equipped with flotation devices to keep them afloat in the event of an emergency landing. Mr Mannion said the industry will have to look - for the first time - at options for storing unsold helicopters. Manufacturers said limited indoor storage facilities in hangars had created a need for alternative solutions. Mr Mannion said the alternatives included shrink-wrapping or Heli-Cells - inflatable climate-controlled canopies originally developed to protect expensive classic cars. Era Group, one of the largest helicopter operators in the Gulf of Mexico, has said it may cancel or defer almost three-quarters of its orders, including deals with Lockheed Martin’s Sikorsky unit and AgustaWestland.
Market leader CHC, which went public two years ago, has seen its market value wiped out after peaking at $1.3bn, and the company was delisted from the New York Stock Exchange in January. It has hired multiple advisers to examine restructuring a heavy debt load.

Moody’s Investors Service last week downgraded CHC deeper into junk territory. CHC has been cutting costs, reducing its workforce and paring its fleet, but remains optimistic it can weather the storm.

“Despite the prolonged nature of the current downturn, we believe the long-term market fundamentals supporting our industry remain intact,” CHC Chief Executive Karl Fessenden said on an investor call this month. Shares in Houston-based Bristow, the second-largest global operator by sales, are down 77 per cent from their peak. “The length and severity of this downturn is worse than initially expected, but that is why we have always kept lower levels of leverage and lower numbers of leased helicopters as part of our business model,” said Jonathan Baliff, Bristow’s chief executive, in a statement.

Increased exploration when oil was above $100 a barrel led operators and a new breed of leasing companies to place orders for dozens of new helicopters able to fly faster and farther for clients such as Royal Dutch Shell and Statoil ASA. Demand for new helicopters was so high at the end of 2013 that it had created yearslong waiting lists for the largest models, even with factories running at full rate. The fastest growth in recent years had been in the so-called super-medium category, $30m machines able to carry 12 to 18 workers 320km or more to far-flung platforms off the coasts of Norway, Brazil and West Africa.

Airbus and AgustaWestland have also rolled out faster and larger models designed to serve fields farther from shore. Energy companies are now paring production and slashing exploration budgets, forcing helicopter operators to cut staff, streamline operations and shelve or cancel new helicopter orders.

“It’s a challenging market to be launching any new aircraft, especially one targeting oil and gas,” said Ed Washecka, chief executive of Waypoint Leasing Services LLC, one of the new-breed companies that sprang up to rent helicopters to the industry. Dana Fiatarone, vice president of Sikorsky’s commercial unit, said it could take three to five years to burn off the excess capacity. Lockheed Martin, which paid $9bn for Sikorsky last year, expects the unit’s commercial sales to slide to $375m this year from a peak of $1.5bn in 2013.

While Lockheed’s interest was driven primarily by Sikorsky’s military helicopters, executives were also drawn by the commercial market.

One bright spot for manufacturers is that toughening global safety rules could hasten pushing out older helicopters in favour of newer models. Textron’s new Bell 225 is due to be delivered to its launch customer next year, and has been designed so that every passenger is just one seat from its safety-exit windows, closer than rival rotorcraft. Such design changes that add safety features could make new helicopters more attractive to customers.

Thanks for posting the article.

Textron's Bell 525..............

Is that a question ( maybe with a hidden rising terminal) or a statement?

I think it was a correction to the article quoting the aircraft as "...Textron's new 225..."

Does anyone have any update on the current status of this investor lawsuit?

Link deleted.

Answered in my next post.