{"id":4450,"date":"2019-05-01T13:19:52","date_gmt":"2019-05-01T18:19:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/planesintheair.com\/?p=4450"},"modified":"2019-05-01T13:19:54","modified_gmt":"2019-05-01T18:19:54","slug":"thomas-cook-sets-may-7-deadline-for-airline-interest","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/planesintheair.com\/?p=4450","title":{"rendered":"Thomas Cook Sets May 7 Deadline for Airline Interest"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

LONDON (Reuters) – Thomas Cook has set a deadline of May 7 for expressions of interest in its airline business, with Indigo Partners and Lufthansa among the likely bidders, sources said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The heavily-indebted British travel group put its profitable airline business up for sale in February after profit warnings in 2018 left it needing to raise cash.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Thomas Cook’s airlines business consists of Germany’s Condor, as well as British, Scandinavian and Spanish operations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A sale of the business, in whole or in part, would enable the world’s oldest tour operator to invest more in its own hotels and improve its online sales.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A source familiar with the discussions said that Indigo and Germany’s Lufthansa appeared most interested in the business.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

British Airways owner IAG should not be ruled out and easyJet has engaged in talks but is seen as less interested, the source added.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is not clear whether Ireland’s Ryanair would bid.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Another source said that private equity groups KKR and Apollo might also look at taking over the whole of Thomas Cook.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The airlines business would provide access to valuable European slots linking Britain to Spain, Greece and Turkey.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Thomas Cook, Indigo, IAG and easyJet declined to comment, while Lufthansa and Ryanair were not immediately available.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Lufthansa executives have said repeatedly that the German airline wants to “play an active role” in consolidation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Indigo, the private equity firm managed by Bill Franke, the veteran U.S. low-cost airline investor, has previously made investments in several airlines including Hungary’s Wizz.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Thomas\n Cook has been revamping different parts of its business this year, \nclosing high street stores and reviewing its money division as it \nfocuses on holidays.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The company was hit badly in 2018 when a hot European summer deterred customers from booking holidays through the year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One banking source said the airline would fetch less than 1 billion euros (\u00a3859 million). Thomas Cook has a current market value of just over \u00a3400 million.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sources said that competition issues could influence which parts of the business different suitors go for.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sky News has said China’s Fosun International, a Thomas Cook shareholder, was interested in its tour business.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

(Reporting by Kate Holton and Clara Denina in London; additional reporting by Alistair Smout and Georgina Prodhan in London and Arno Schuetze in Frankfurt; Editing by Alexander Smith)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
FILE PHOTO: A Thomas Cook Airbus A321-200 airplane takes off at the airport in Palma de Mallorca, Spain, July 28, 2018. REUTERS\/Paul Hanna\/File Photo <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Thomas Cook has set a deadline of May 7 for expressions of interest in its airline business, with Indigo Partners and Lufthansa among the likely bidders, sources said. The heavily-indebted British travel group put its profitable airline business up for sale <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[797,89,2203,1397,868,1103],"tags":[420,625,2866,160,4421,3553,624,988,622,3416,4423,419,507,2553,4426,3919,571,411,745,1254,2558,620,710,4420,199,1440,4425,87,137,4422,412,4424,1090,1022,1288,418,4355,755,1932,3415,1916,2079,722],"class_list":["post-4450","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-airline-news","category-aviation-news","category-finance-news","category-stock-news","category-transportation-news","category-travel-news","tag-airline","tag-airways","tag-apollo","tag-aviation","tag-bidders","tag-bill","tag-british","tag-business","tag-condor","tag-cook","tag-deadline","tag-easyjet","tag-england","tag-equity","tag-fosun","tag-franke","tag-germany","tag-greece","tag-group","tag-hotel","tag-hungary","tag-iag","tag-indigo","tag-interest","tag-international","tag-ireland","tag-kkr","tag-london","tag-lufthansa","tag-may","tag-news","tag-operation","tag-partners","tag-private","tag-reuters","tag-ryanair","tag-scandinavia","tag-sky","tag-spain","tag-thomas","tag-travel","tag-turkey","tag-wizz"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/planesintheair.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4450","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/planesintheair.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/planesintheair.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planesintheair.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planesintheair.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4450"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/planesintheair.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4450\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4452,"href":"https:\/\/planesintheair.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4450\/revisions\/4452"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/planesintheair.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4450"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planesintheair.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4450"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planesintheair.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4450"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}