Ansett Australian Global Rewards - It's done - Fox, Lew to take over Ansett

From the SMH:
Fox, Lew to take over Ansett

Millionaire businessmen Lindsay Fox and Solomon Lew are the new owners of Ansett's main airline assets.

Mr Fox and Mr Lew announced today that they had reached an agreement with Ansett administrators Mark Mentha and Mark Korda of Andersen.

The deal is worth $3.6 billion, which includes the Fox-Lew $2.5 billion commitment for an all new fleet of Airbus aircraft.

The deal is subject to the approval of Ansett creditors, the Federal Court of Australia and the finalisation of support measures by the federal and Victorian governments.

The new operations, retaining the Ansett name, will only fly to major airports, but will be linked with the Star Alliance network of international airlines.

Mr Lew and Mr Fox will buy terminals and Ansett's headquarters in Melbourne.

Many of the airline's unwanted assets - such as engineering, regional airlines and buildings - will be left behind to be sold off.

There are also plans to re-introduce a frequent-flyer scheme, but it is still not known whether some, or all, of the 70 billion points lost in the Global Rewards program will be redeemable.

You are little optimistic.

Fox & Lew are not the new owners. Any deal has to be approved by the creditors and the Federal Court. This is reported as happening in December.

The so called $3.6 billion includes $2.5 of new aircraft which will be leased. This gets any deal down to $1.1, and counting down.

They should be able get a good deal on any short or long term aircraft lease, with so much metal sitting on the ground and airlines / banks trying to off load aircraft in production or due for production.

In today newspaper's it is stated that Fox Lew want the taxpayer's of Oz to kick in $600 million of our hard earned tax dollars. Qantas passengers are already kicking $10 per flight for the former employees of a failed opposition.

It has been stated publicly how much hard cash of their own Sol-Fox will tip in (as opposed to debt). My guess is not much.

The Ansett game starts again Monday morning after the election results


[This message has been edited by Mwenenzi (edited 11-10-2001).]