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German government to bail Lufthansa out of bankruptcy with nearly $10B state aid

businessinsider.com

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Re: German government to bail Lufthansa out of bankruptcy with nearly $10B state aid

#71

Post by oaiey »

tasubotadas wrote: post #33

>The company will take the money but the state won't get a say: this is a concise summary of what Lufthansa's Executive Board, headed by CEO Carsten Spohr, has been telling German politicians in the past few weeks. That's awesome. Create a crappy business, hire 130k employees, and get the state to pay for your failures. At this point, I would be happier that they would just give the money to Google and Facebook which…

The have a blocking minority controlled by a single entity. Why bordering with a seat in a board. And they appoint the board sear they got. Will be some consultant or state near industrialist. There are plenty of them.

Re: German government to bail Lufthansa out of bankruptcy with nearly $10B state aid

#74

Post by chosenbreed37 »

makomk wrote: post #36
mrep wrote: post #5

Yahoo finance says their market cap is 4 billion [0] and yet they are getting a bailout worth 2.5 times their market cap. That's crazy. [0]: https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/lha.de/

I think Matt Levine has pointed out before that the amount of money it would take to keep US airlines going was likely to be more than their pre-Covid market cap. It's a big reason why the idea that they should just have saved up enough money to not need bailouts instead of paying out to shareholders is a non-starter; the value of the airlines to shareholders is less than the amount it would cost, because air travel…

Socializing the losses...I like that turn of phrase :-)

Re: German government to bail Lufthansa out of bankruptcy with nearly $10B state aid

#75

Post by Symbiote »

joyj2nd wrote: post #28
hanniabu wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, we can't let them fail, that'd be capitalism!

Many major national carriers have national importance. So, no, they won't go bankrupt. Be it Lufthansa, Air France, Air China, or whatever. Airlines like Ryanair and Wizz air might be different.

Several European countries allowed their former national airlines to go bankrupt or be sold to foreign owners.

Swissair, Sabene (Belgium) and Olympic (Greece) went bankrupt, I'm sure there are more.

Air France and KLM (Netherlands) merged a while ago, as did British Airways and Iberia (Spain).

Ryanair is Europe's largest airline by passenger numbers.

Re: German government to bail Lufthansa out of bankruptcy with nearly $10B state aid

#76

Post by intended »

smoyer wrote: post #48

One thing that I think the business world has finally learned during the COVID-19 social distancing is that business travel isn't nearly so important as we had imagined. And attending conferences was always fun but it's been amazing to watch how fast conferences have switched to an on-line format (well ... the technical ones that I would attend). So it's my opinion that the airlines, hotels, conference centers and ta…

I think people are going to find the opposite, that networking events are even more crucial to growth (evidenced by research), and the ones who didn't realize this before will now fight for the opportunities that come up in firms.

Re: German government to bail Lufthansa out of bankruptcy with nearly $10B state aid

#77

Post by a3_nm »

smoyer wrote: post #48

One thing that I think the business world has finally learned during the COVID-19 social distancing is that business travel isn't nearly so important as we had imagined. And attending conferences was always fun but it's been amazing to watch how fast conferences have switched to an on-line format (well ... the technical ones that I would attend). So it's my opinion that the airlines, hotels, conference centers and ta…

> "attending conferences was always fun"

Well it's also because there were always disadvantages we forget about: hours upon hours of travel, going on your own, sleeping in unfamiliar rooms, not to mention the cost of it all. Going to a remote place for a few days isn't so fun when you remember all the hours spent in an airplane seat to get there and back.

Re: German government to bail Lufthansa out of bankruptcy with nearly $10B state aid

#79

Post by oaiey »

gumby wrote: post #45

Shrewd negotiation by the CEO! Unlike, say, Volkswagen which has a significant stake owned by Niedersachsen and politically appointed board directors, Lufthansa will have two non-politician directors and no state veto.

A blocking minority sounds different than a "no state veto".

Re: German government to bail Lufthansa out of bankruptcy with nearly $10B state aid

#80

Post by a3_nm »

abdullahkhalids wrote: post #70
smoyer wrote: post #48

One thing that I think the business world has finally learned during the COVID-19 social distancing is that business travel isn't nearly so important as we had imagined. And attending conferences was always fun but it's been amazing to watch how fast conferences have switched to an on-line format (well ... the technical ones that I would attend). So it's my opinion that the airlines, hotels, conference centers and ta…

At least in academia, people usually don't go to conferences to attend the talks - they are uploaded on youtube and you could watch them from home. People go because they are good networking events. That is something which you can't really do online. Edit: of course, a minority of attendees are there to present their work, which can indeed be done online.

In my academic field (computer science), people go to conferences because you have to present in person the research that you publish there. The question of whether traveling to the conference is worthwhile at all is irrelevant. With conferences moving online, the question starts to have some importance and the answer isn't so clear.
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