What's going to collapse next...

[Ash4781b]

6 hours ago, Tdog said:

I believe in the last century this kind of thing was called capitalism or something like that.

There is reporting that appears to suggest a request may have been made for a government bailout. And not even through RBS channels!

[Chewing Grass]

16 minutes ago, Ash4781b said:

There is reporting that appears to suggest a request may have been made for a government bailout. And not even through RBS channels!

Why the fuck would the government bailout a company that sells foreign holidays at the arse end of the holiday season.

D'd'drrrrr, unless it could possibly be blamed on frigging Brexit by the media rather than the reality being foreign tour operators like TUI.

Edited September 20, 2019 by Chewing Grass

[spygirl]

Many many many years ago (95ish IIRC)

I was involved in a  run in with this woman

https://uk.linkedin.com/in/harrietg

How in fuck, someone who runs a component disti - badly - somehow gets to be a CEO ofThomas Cook?

Well I know, networking, sucking up, playing the girly card.

A company like arrow is just a big warehouse. They run a suppliers account then manage a creditors/customers accounts.

Its not complex, providing you keep an eye of your cash and debtors.

Arrow existed to save the electro component makes the ball ache of running customer accounts in every country.

Then she moved to Premier Farnell, same sort of shit, different company.

Then she jopined ThomCook as CEO.

I was like Eh?

It would have been less surpising if shed becoenm a heart surgeon.

Component distis are bacially given a lot of rope and credit  by electro makers to run their csutomer facing disti. Its sort of a lazy doupoly. AMrgins are thin but competition is controlled.

ThomCook is a v competitive industry, facing structural change  which ThoMCook has fucked up massively by doing fuckall.

ThomCook required a massive rebase to running web based operation - something that is not easy at the scale they operate.

She lasts ~4 years.

This will be where the fuck up really happened.

https://www.theguardian.com/theobserver/2014/nov/30/harriet-green-thomas-cook-high-flyer-packs-her-bags

Before abruptly leaving her job last week, Harriet Green had a print in her office at Thomas Cook displaying one of her favourite quotes: the observation by American writer Maya Angelou that people will forget what you did and said, but never how you made them feel.

The framed words were a gift from staff of the world’s oldest travel operator to the most alpha of alpha females – a 52-year-old City turnaround specialist who had arrived at the package holiday operator in 2012 when it had become Britain’s least admired company – and there were genuine fears about its survival. Green’s achievement was to change that and radically alter how employees and the City felt about the business: she is widely credited with saving the travel agent, whose shares were up tenfold just before her premature departure was announced.

 

She also transformed the way the business community perceived Harriet Green, culminating with her being named as Veuve Clicquot businesswoman of the year in May. But with hindsight, that gift from her underlings is tinged with irony.

While Green routinely describes herself as a “landa”, which she defines as a cross between a cuddly panda and a ferocious lion, it is not hard to find staff at Thomas Cook who remember feeling more like they were battling the latter. One former colleague talks about Green’s colleagues living “in fear of her public humiliations”, a state of anxiety that even, perhaps, extends to her brother, Jimmy, whom she hired as her driver and who took “ballistic” public reprimands from his sister and boss. Green strongly denies suggestions that her style is overly aggressive (although she does admit to ticking off Jimmy). She counters: “These anonymous quotes do not reflect the reality of my leadership of Thomas Cook, which was declared positive by 93% of staff respondents to my recent appraisal. I am proud of what I and the wonderful team at Thomas Cook has achieved in the past two years and wish them well in the future.”

http://www.travelweekly.co.uk/articles/43469/big-interview-harriet-green-on-the-transformation-of-thomas-cook

 

 

 

 

[Don Coglione]

2 hours ago, spygirl said:

Many many many years ago (95ish IIRC)

I was involved in a  run in with this woman

https://uk.linkedin.com/in/harrietg

How in fuck, someone who runs a component disti - badly - somehow gets to be a CEO ofThomas Cook?

Well I know, networking, sucking up, playing the girly card.

A company like arrow is just a big warehouse. They run a suppliers account then manage a creditors/customers accounts.

Its not complex, providing you keep an eye of your cash and debtors.

Arrow existed to save the electro component makes the ball ache of running customer accounts in every country.

Then she moved to Premier Farnell, same sort of shit, different company.

Then she jopined ThomCook as CEO.

I was like Eh?

It would have been less surpising if shed becoenm a heart surgeon.

Component distis are bacially given a lot of rope and credit  by electro makers to run their csutomer facing disti. Its sort of a lazy doupoly. AMrgins are thin but competition is controlled.

ThomCook is a v competitive industry, facing structural change  which ThoMCook has fucked up massively by doing fuckall.

ThomCook required a massive rebase to running web based operation - something that is not easy at the scale they operate.

She lasts ~4 years.

This will be where the fuck up really happened.

https://www.theguardian.com/theobserver/2014/nov/30/harriet-green-thomas-cook-high-flyer-packs-her-bags

Before abruptly leaving her job last week, Harriet Green had a print in her office at Thomas Cook displaying one of her favourite quotes: the observation by American writer Maya Angelou that people will forget what you did and said, but never how you made them feel.

The framed words were a gift from staff of the world’s oldest travel operator to the most alpha of alpha females – a 52-year-old City turnaround specialist who had arrived at the package holiday operator in 2012 when it had become Britain’s least admired company – and there were genuine fears about its survival. Green’s achievement was to change that and radically alter how employees and the City felt about the business: she is widely credited with saving the travel agent, whose shares were up tenfold just before her premature departure was announced.

 

She also transformed the way the business community perceived Harriet Green, culminating with her being named as Veuve Clicquot businesswoman of the year in May. But with hindsight, that gift from her underlings is tinged with irony.

While Green routinely describes herself as a “landa”, which she defines as a cross between a cuddly panda and a ferocious lion, it is not hard to find staff at Thomas Cook who remember feeling more like they were battling the latter. One former colleague talks about Green’s colleagues living “in fear of her public humiliations”, a state of anxiety that even, perhaps, extends to her brother, Jimmy, whom she hired as her driver and who took “ballistic” public reprimands from his sister and boss. Green strongly denies suggestions that her style is overly aggressive (although she does admit to ticking off Jimmy). She counters: “These anonymous quotes do not reflect the reality of my leadership of Thomas Cook, which was declared positive by 93% of staff respondents to my recent appraisal. I am proud of what I and the wonderful team at Thomas Cook has achieved in the past two years and wish them well in the future.”

http://www.travelweekly.co.uk/articles/43469/big-interview-harriet-green-on-the-transformation-of-thomas-cook

 

 

 

 

The entire travel "industry" is populated with utter retards (with a very few notable exceptions). Traditionally a licence to print money, because people feel the need to burn to a crisp in the sun, innit; then along comes the internet and - BOOM.

[leonardratso]

i used to work for freemans catalogue back in the early 90's, they more or less ignored the internet, before it was too late. Eventually they got swallowed up by grattan and a few mail order firms consolidated there, i remember seeing back then that management was only interested in lining its own pocket and ignored the bigger picture and the way things were trending, left high and dry and a minnow of its former self. deja vu.

[BearyBear]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-49791249 

Thomas Cook has collapsed after last-minute negotiations aimed at saving the 178-year-old holiday firm failed.

The UK Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) said the tour operator had "ceased trading with immediate effect".

It has also triggered the biggest ever peacetime repatriation, aimed at bringing more than 150,000 British holidaymakers home.

Peter Fankhauser, Thomas Cook's chief executive, said the firm's collapse was a "matter of profound regret".

Commenting as the company entered compulsory liquidation, Mr Fankhauser also apologised to the firm's "millions of customers, and thousands of employees".

The tour operator's failure puts 22,000 jobs at risk worldwide, including 9,000 in the UK.

the So-Called BBC's Transport Correspondent Tom Burridge said that 16,000 holidaymakers are booked to come back on Monday. Authorities hope to get at least 14,000 of them home on chartered flights.

The government has chartered 45 jets to bring customers home and they will fly 64 routes today. The size of the fleet will make it temporarily the UK's fifth largest airline.

Operators including EasyJet and Virgin have supplied some aircraft, with jets coming from as far afield as Malaysia.

[Cosmic]

1 hour ago, BearyBear said:

Operators including EasyJet and Virgin have supplied some aircraft, with jets coming from as far afield as Malaysia.

Why not just cease Cooks jets and use them? Then flog them off afterwards to pay for the operation. Fuck the creditors they should have done some more DD.

[Dogtania]

Been hearing about the possible repercussions for all stranded travellers abroad and possible large scale Normandy (?) repatriations.

I checked yesterday on the cook website and looked like I could still book a holiday?  Not sure how it works maybe I couldn't have completed transaction... Was just thinking to myself how if in danger of closing the gov could have limited there exposure by disallowing but guess that would have meant definitely no possibility of saving.  Just strange to see and morbidly I do like observing in real time the transition from on to off 🤨

 

[dgul]

2 hours ago, Cosmic Apple said:

Why not just cease Cooks jets and use them? Then flog them off afterwards to pay for the operation. Fuck the creditors they should have done some more DD.

I thought that.

I can only imagine that they're now 'complicated' -- the owners want them back, the airports have locked them and want fees and fuel paid* and the administrators don't really have a handle on what's going on at this point.  Far easier to lease them from people who are actually set up to lease them, especially as they've been in discussions about this (cost bargaining, etc) for days now.

[dgul]

17 minutes ago, Tdog said:

A company with 150,000 customers overseas when out of season, yet they cant make a profit.

This isn't quite out of season -- these are the weeks when people without kids go on holiday.

[Bedrag Justesen]

Cardiff Airport.

Struggling prior to Thomas Cook collapse.

Attempt to support Welsh government owned airport by devolving  Air Passenger Duty to ... Welsh government unsuccessful.

Loss of revenue from 100 Thomas Cook flights monthly could well be final nail.

 

[Bear Hug]

FT: Metro Bank pulls £200m bond sale in fresh blow

Quote

It was seeking to raise between £200m and £250m, but had received only £175m of orders by mid-afternoon on Monday. 

At 7.5% yield!

Edited September 23, 2019 by Bear Hug

[spygirl]

7 hours ago, Bear Hug said:

FT: Metro Bank pulls £200m bond sale in fresh blow

At 7.5% yield!

I noticed  that.

Interesting to compare with ThomCook, which was obviously fucked ~2010ish but banks still kept lending, giving resulting in it going bust owing billions.

GreyBull - see another thread in this section - also failed to get a high yield bond issue out.

So did Siriums minerals.

 

 

[spygirl]

MetroBank down 20%

93% down on a year.

[spygirl]

8 hours ago, spygirl said:

MetroBank down 20%

93% down on a year.

30% down.

[dgul]

Wrightbus is going into administration tomorrow.

They're the ones that made the 'new Routemaster' busses in London.  Such a shame.

https://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/northern-ireland/wrightbus-to-enter-administration-on-wednesday-putting-1400-jobs-at-risk-38530615.html

[Andersen]

Sainsburys & Argos are closing supermarkets & shops as a cost-cutting excersise, but are also plannning to expand and open new ones. Good news or not? Watch this space  https://uk.yahoo.com/finance/news/sainsburys-sainsbury-stores-close-supermarkets-which-argos-shops-shut-down-072440931.html

[Ash4781b]

Wow so a bank tries to raise funds and fails. It looks bad lol

On 23/09/2019 at 23:40, Bear Hug said:

FT: Metro Bank pulls £200m bond sale in fresh blow

At 7.5% yield!

Looking back all those flashy looking branches for what - another special purpose vehicle nears . Did they load up on BTL mortgages I lose track?

Edited September 25, 2019 by Ash4781b

[Bear Hug]

1 hour ago, Ash4781b said:

Wow so a bank tries to raise funds and fails. It looks bad lol

Looking back all those flashy looking branches for what - another special purpose vehicle nears . Did they load up on BTL mortgages I lose track?

A summary from ToS's spyguy:

Quote

At what price if these are high LTV 

A bit more complex. MB appear to have bought a book of BTL loans from Cerebus (PE), who bougth the loans from UKAR.

Now consider what happened with those loans before Cerebus bought them - NR and whoever sourced these loans, 08 hit, and the banks cpaital took a hit, before the book was bought by Cerebus. Cerbus than tidied up the loan booo, lean on the morgagees to put more money, shutting down any defaulting borrowers - all on its own dollar - then sold the book to MB.

Now MB have messed up - and this is a massive, shouldnotbeletnearbanks messup by MB, Cerebus are back in the frame to sort them out.

Ideally, all IO BTL would be force onto 10-15 year repayment commercial mortgages - thts is waht Id do if I was CEO of BoE. Theres not point p1ssing arond with IO laons, gets them moved to amortising ASAP.

As it is, UK tax payer has lost little, abr a lower yield on the loan than the risk deserved.

MB are not that important.

Bank regulator needs to throw a bank under the bus, every now and then, to keep the system on its toes.

MB could be the first bank to be resolved. All the equity and cpaital - poof! - gone.

Ohter banks/BS candidates are Nationwide and Coventry BS.

Good. Thats how thigns should be.

 

[The Masked Tulip]

 

 

[spygirl]

On 25/09/2019 at 23:07, Bear Hug said:

A summary from ToS's spyguy:

 

Challenger banks were one of Gidiots clever Brownian idea. An attempt to replace ~70% iof UK banks that went poof!

Now hes gone, theres noone cheerleading having a bunch of shyster, scam artists, and general Spanish inbred idiots in the uK banking sector.

Any mistake - and theyve made huge fucks up - MB, TSB, Santander - and they are out.

 

 

[spygirl]

Sirius down another 15% today.

Panic!!!!!!!

[dgul]

15 minutes ago, spygirl said:

Sirius down another 15% today.

Panic!!!!!!!

It is probably bankrupt already.

I give it 30 days.

[spygirl]

28 minutes ago, dgul said:

It is probably bankrupt already.

I give it 30 days.

Sad day for me27 Sep 2019 11:17

I've just crystallised my losses on this, my jewel in the crown share, to the tune of over £74k down the swanny. It feels like I've cut the snagged rope that was pulling the boat under. Like many on here, my finances are severely damaged from this endeavour and my hopes of earlier retirement have evaporated. Keep your chins up and wait for that light at the end of the tunnel.

 

Hard decisions to be madeToday 10:33

I normally a positive upbeat investor but this week has been brutal .
It’s getting to the point IMO that the SP will be zero soon and it’s ‘last person turn the lights out’ is inevitable . Not based on anything other than daily decreases in SP can only last so long .

I’ve always preached patience but starting to think time is one thing we no longer have and maybe the 6 mths the BOD of SM gave themselves is something they can’t control and will run away from them .

The BOD need to get something out of an upbeat nature To calm the storm ..not necessary a RNS .

I don’t think CF timing of talking to the Times last week about “ PIs bought on bad advice .. etc” was helpful at all and I tend to think he’s paving the way for the inevitable liquidation.
I do believe the next major RNS will be either superman/woman /non binary / identify as a fridge person(s) have come to the rescue or we are in liquidation.

I do take comfort in the conference call last week but even that is becoming watered down by the day.

I have spoke to family and gave them the reality that 10s of £1000 will be gone and I think the general opinion is ... keep going till the end no point wrapping in after coming this far and may as well lose the lot than reclaim a few £1000 that’s left .
So I’m in till the end or the return of Lazarus .

I’m so gutted as the investment was to help the kids and that feels like failure But we’ll survive to fight another day ... but not in stocks/shares ... once bitten etc .

The first Ch Tunnel was attempted in the 1880s , so maybe someone in over 100 years time will try again and succeed and wonder what all the fuss was about.

Well that’s my semi rant .. time to accept reality

The trolls and doom merchants have no part to play in this predicament , they can post all day long , and I’ll keep filtering all day long .
I don’t need idiots like them to influence my decisions .

 

RE: Million sharesToday 10:08

Administration is highly unlikely.The fertiliser still underground is very valuable and there will be quite a few buyers at the right price.However this is best achieved by continuing the building process in the same efficient manner without the disruption of an administration process .I suggest there may be a bit of an auction with a result much higher than the current price.

[One percent]

51 minutes ago, spygirl said:

Sirius down another 15% today.

Panic!!!!!!!

My sparky was telling me a couple of days ago that everyone was piling back in at 8p a share.