Forum Archive Index - September 2001

["Nick Kearney" <nk@xtra.co.nz>]

Snoopy & others

Have to disagree.  They have done something wrong.  Something very basic.
They allowed themselves (years ago admittedly) to become involved in an
industry that a government shouldn't be in.  Telecom mirrors this with their
'kiwi share'.

The market might not always be right but IMHO if it was allowed to function
without restrictions being placed on it like the cap on shares then we might
have seen a different result.

I know what response I'll get to this - tourism blah blah blah; landing
rights blah blah blah, but the truth of the matter is we will never know
what would have happened had AIR operated in a trrue market, because like
other services in this country, the government sticks its bloody beak in
where, IMO, it isn't welcome or necessary.

Cheers

NK
----- Original Message -----
From: <tennyson@caverock.net.nz>
To: <sharechat@sharechat.co.nz>
Sent: Tuesday, September 18, 2001 7:05 AM
Subject: Re: [sharechat] Air New Zealand


> Hi Hans, Ben and All on the Thread and Other Readers,
>
> I read Frank Fernandez's Stocktake article and Ben's piece both
> blasting the New Zealand government, re the Air New Zealand affair.
> I have to say, I don't agree with their views.
>
> The assumption behind all of this seems to be that if Singapore had
> been allowed to lift its stake to 49% of Ansett six weeks ago, then
> all would be well now.
>
> There are three presumptions in that position.   The first is
> that the $500m that Singapore Airlines intended to inject into Air
> New Zealand would be enough.  The second (secret) presumption (which
> came out after the fact) was that Virgin Blue was up for sale.  The
> third presumption was that there was a firm offer from Singapore
> Airlines on the table.   All of these presumptions were false.
>
> Air New Zealand is on record as saying they needed access to
> $NZ4billion dollars to rejuvenate an Ansett fleet that was no longer
> making losses.  The package put up by Singapore Airlines came nowhere
> near this.
>
> Something that I have become aware of more recently was that Virgin
> approached Singapore Airlines to take a stake in Virgin Blue to get
> this airline off the ground.  This deal was kaiboshed
> when Singapore Airlines invested in Air New Zealand instead.
> Branson was clearly annoyed at this turn of events, and was never
> going to be an easy player to bring back into line down under.
>
> The third point was the letter of intent to purchase Air New
> Zealand shares at $1.31 from Singapore Airlines.  This was always
> going to be subject to due diligence, and was in no way a firm offer.
> Once Singapore airlines got hold of the true picture they would
> have found what the NZ government found:   A boardroom table with
> nothing but bare bums sitting around it!  The emperor had no clothes.
>  There was no credible business plan from the board to stop the red
> ink haemmorhaging.  Singapore Airlines would have pulled the plug on
> their $1.31 plan at this point.
>
> There is nothing the New Zealand government could have done to stop
> any of this.  The only delay from the government was because the Air
> New Zealand board could not come up with a credible business plan.
> The NZ government hasn't done anything wrong as I see it. SNOOPY
>
>
>
> ---------------------------------
> Message sent by Snoopy
> e-mail  tennyson@caverock.net.nz
> on Pegasus Mail version 2.55
> ----------------------------------
> "Dogs have big tongues, so you can bet they don't
> bite them by accident"
>
>
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