* Bosses meeting creditors, lenders to agree its future
* Company could go into administration early Monday
By Kate Holton
LONDON, Sept 22 (Reuters) - Bosses at Britain's Thomas Cook
were meeting lenders and creditors on Sunday to decide
whether the world's oldest travel company could survive until
Monday, or face a chaotic collapse that would be felt around the
world.
Running hotels and resorts, airlines and cruises, Thomas
Cook has 600,000 customers on holiday, meaning governments and
insurance companies could be forced to step in and bring them
home if the company goes into administration.
The management team, led by Peter Fankhauser, was meeting
banks and bondholders at a London law firm on Sunday morning
before a board meeting in the early evening to determine whether
it can continue.
The company, founded in 1841, has been fighting for its
survival after its lenders threatened to pull the plug on a
rescue deal that has been months in the making.
Hurt by high levels of debt, online competition and
geopolitical uncertainty, Thomas Cook needs to find another 200
million pounds ($250 million) on top of a 900 million pound
package it had already agreed, to see it through the winter
months when it needs to pay hotels for their summer services.
A person familiar with the situation told Reuters the
company was spending the weekend in talks with the government
and a number of potential investors about bridging the funding
gap. "We have not given up," the person said on Saturday,
declining to be named due to the sensitivity of the situation.
Were Thomas Cook to fail, it would spark the biggest
peacetime repatriation effort in British history.
The government and the aviation regulator have drawn up a
plan to step in and use other airlines to bring Britons home if
needed. In Germany, where some 300,000 are abroad with the
operator, it will fall to their insurance companies to help get
them home.
The news has sparked alarm not just across the holiday
resorts and poolside bars where customers are taking to social
media for updates, but to the company's suppliers and future
customers who are losing faith in the firm.
That is draining the company of the liquidity it needs to
keep operating and ramping up the pressure on one of Britain's
oldest and much-loved companies.
"Hi Annie, I understand your father might be unsettled by
all the news surrounding Thomas Cook and our business recently
but our flight operations continue to operate as normal," the
company said in response to one worried customer.
British foreign minister Dominic Raab sought to reassure
holidaymakers that they would not end up stuck overseas.
"We .... hope that it (Thomas Cook) can continue but in any
event, as you would expect, we've got the contingency planning
in place to make sure that in any worst-case scenario we can
support all those who might otherwise be stranded," Raab told
the BBC.
At the board meeting, the company will have to decide
whether in the short term it has enough cash to pay its ongoing
requirements, and whether it has a reasonable prospect of paying
its liabilities in six to 12 months' time, which is predicated
on it securing a deal.
At the earlier meeting the lenders will have to decide
whether they want to continue supporting a company that has 19
million customers a year in 16 countries.
It is battling a debt pile of 1.7 billion pounds and can be
knocked off course by events such as a coup in Turkey, a
heatwave in Europe and the aggressive summer pricing of low-cost
airlines like Ryanair.
(Reporting by Kate Holton; Additional reporting by William
James and Thomas Escritt; Editing by Dale Hudson)
