Travel group Thomas Cook fights for survival at final meeting of creditors

LONDON (Reuters) – The Englishman Thomas Cook (TCG.L) met with lenders and creditors on Sunday to decide whether the world's oldest travel agency could survive until Monday, or face a chaotic collapse that would be felt around the world.

Thomas Cook, which manages hotels and resorts, airlines and cruises, has 600,000 vacation guests, which means governments and insurance companies may be forced to intervene and to bring them home if the business passed to the administration.

The management team, led by Peter Fankhauser, met with banks and bondholders early Sunday morning in a London law firm before a board meeting in the early evening to see if it could continue.

The company, founded in 1841, has fought for its survival after its lenders have threatened to end a bailout deal that has been going on for months.

Wounded by high debt, online competition and geopolitical uncertainty, Thomas Cook has to find 200 million pounds ($ 250 million) in addition to a £ 900 million package that He had already agreed to be able to get through the winter months paying hotels for their summer services.

A person familiar with the situation told Reuters that the company was spending the weekend talking to the government and a number of potential investors to fill the funding gap. "We did not give up," said the person on Saturday, refusing to be named because of the sensitivity of the situation.

If Thomas Cook fails, this would cause the greatest peacetime repatriation effort in British history.

The government and the aviation regulator have developed a plan to intervene and call on other airlines to bring the British home if necessary. In Germany, where some 300,000 people are abroad with the operator, it will be up to their insurance companies to help them get home.

The news has triggered an alarm not only in the resorts and poolside bars, where customers are addressing social media, but also to the company's suppliers and future customers who are losing confidence in the company. # 39; company.

This is draining the company of the liquidity it needs to continue operating and intensifying the pressure on one of the oldest and most valued companies in Britain.

"Hello Annie, I know your father might be upset by all the news about Thomas Cook and our company recently, but our airline operations continue to function normally," the company told a worried customer.

British Foreign Minister Dominic Raab reassured holidaymakers that they would not be stranded abroad.

"We … hope that Thomas Cook can continue, but in any case, as you can imagine, we have put in place an emergency plan to ensure that, in the worst case, we can help anyone who might otherwise be blocked, "Raab told the BBC.

At the board of directors, the company will have to decide whether, in the short term, it has enough cash to pay for its current needs and whether it has a reasonable prospect of paying its debts in six to twelve months, according to forecasts . get an agreement.

At the previous meeting, lenders will have to decide if they want to continue supporting a company that has 19 million customers a year in 16 countries.

He is fighting with a debt of 1.7 billion pounds and can be put out of action by events such as a coup in Turkey, a heat wave in Europe and aggressive tariffs in the UK. been by low cost airlines like Ryanair.