{"id":4569,"date":"2019-05-10T23:20:54","date_gmt":"2019-05-11T04:20:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/planesintheair.com\/?p=4569"},"modified":"2019-05-10T23:21:00","modified_gmt":"2019-05-11T04:21:00","slug":"virgin-atlantic-in-iag-out-in-race-for-thomas-cook-airlines","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/planesintheair.com\/?p=4569","title":{"rendered":"Virgin Atlantic In, IAG Out in Race for Thomas Cook Airlines"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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LONDON (Reuters) – The chief executive of British Airways owner IAG ruled out bidding for Thomas Cook’s airline unit on Friday, a day after rival Virgin Atlantic was reported to be interested in part of the business.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Lufthansa and private equity fund Indigo Partners are seen among the front-runners for Thomas Cook’s airlines after the firm put it up for sale in February, to raise cash after a string of profit warnings in 2018.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

IAG had previously been linked with the business, but on Friday, Chief Executive Willie Walsh said that his firm had not made a bid.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“In relation to Thomas Cook… we’re not putting in any bid,” Walsh told reporters.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He added in an analyst call later in the day that the firm was not actively pursuing M&A at the moment but was in a strong position to do so if something attractive came up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Virgin Atlantic has put in a preliminary offer for the tour operator’s UK long-haul business, Sky News reported on Thursday. Thomas Cook and Virgin Atlantic both declined to comment on the report.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Lufthansa is a bidder for Thomas Cook’s German airline Condor with an option to acquire the remaining airlines of the British travel group, Lufthansa’s CEO said on Tuesday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Indigo Partners is also a likely suitor for Thomas Cook’s airline business, sources said last week, adding that the deadline for initial bids was on Tuesday earlier this week.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

An unexpectedly warm summer in northern Europe last year deterred holiday makers from booking lucrative last minute getaways, resulting in two major profit warnings for the world’s oldest travel company.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Worries about the firm’s ability to pay its debts pushed the yield on its euro-denominated bonds that mature in 2022 to a record high last Friday, and Thomas Cook said later in the day that it was in talks with its lenders about bolstering its finances.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Thomas Cook’s half-year earnings release for the six months to March 31 is due next Thursday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

(Reporting by Alistair Smout; Editing by Keith Weir)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The chief executive of British Airways owner IAG ruled out bidding for Thomas Cook’s airline unit on Friday, a day after rival Virgin Atlantic was reported to be interested in part of the business.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[797,89,2203,868,1103],"tags":[420,625,2374,160,3160,3619,624,1216,622,3416,2495,2553,1907,2052,571,620,710,87,137,412,2383,1090,1022,1288,755,3415,1522,512,3610,3611,4612],"class_list":["post-4569","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-airline-news","category-aviation-news","category-finance-news","category-transportation-news","category-travel-news","tag-airline","tag-airways","tag-atlantic","tag-aviation","tag-bid","tag-bond","tag-british","tag-chief","tag-condor","tag-cook","tag-debt","tag-equity","tag-executive","tag-fund","tag-germany","tag-iag","tag-indigo","tag-london","tag-lufthansa","tag-news","tag-owner","tag-partners","tag-private","tag-reuters","tag-sky","tag-thomas","tag-unit","tag-virgin","tag-walsh","tag-willie","tag-yield"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/planesintheair.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4569","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=4569"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/planesintheair.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4569\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4573,"href":"https:\/\/planesintheair.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4569\/revisions\/4573"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/planesintheair.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4569"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planesintheair.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4569"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planesintheair.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4569"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}