Originally Posted by 1353513636

Ahh...so basically one chaebol outsmarted another in using the government so no more Asiana...

They had a pretty reasonable path to profitability, if they could just separate themselves from the Kumho group that kept using Asiana's profits to help other parts of Kumho instead of buying new planes that they desperately needed, but clearly the Cho family has a lot of sway over the Korean government and this deal is very very good for them.

HDC might be one of the biggest losers from this deal, not just because they didn't get to buy Asiana, but because they will only have one choice for corporate travel. There's a lot of competition in the Korea international market and the 3rd country transit via Korea market, but this is gonna hurt Seoul-based companies needing an airline for business travel because if they want to have a managed corporate travel type program, KE will be the only choice, and it may be the only nonstop option on many routes (and let's face it, execs of big Korean companies aren't going to be flying LCCs), allowing them to charge quite a bit.....I have to wonder if another conglomerate without an airline might suddenly become interested in buying Asiana given the alternative is paying a lot more for corporate air travel for the forseeable future.