Member Info for joetunheimr

Sky News reporting that Andrea Leadsom and Grant Shapps to hold talks with Sajid Javid to defer £100m of tax payments until 2023 to help Flybe stay afloat.

Truly shocking really considering Thomas Cook needed around £100m to stay afloat as well.

If you consider the time value of money, this is effectively the Govt giving the Consortium tax payers' money. Unbelievable.

Hopefully it works out for the staff.

Sky News are reporting that Stobart and Cyrus are having 'reservations' about injecting £100m into the business. Given that as at 31 August 2019 Stobart Group only had £7.7m in unrestricted cash, it is no doubt they have reservations about not wanting to cough up cash as they are hardly awash with it. As we know their Eddie Stobart Logistics investment has also tanked. Not been a good few months for them at all!

The Consortium is made up of what seem to be very different interests. Virgin seems to want Flybe to be a regional feeder into its routes, Stobart want Flybe for synergies with its airline as well as providing extra traffic into Southend and Cyrus, as with any fund, want a quite profit. Cyrus and Virgin likely can make available to cash to keep Flybe afloat so it is hard to see why the government would bail it out instead.

Very sad for the employees though. A lot of employees were shareholders as well as so suffered with the £2.2m purchase by he Consortium. The only consolidation from that was that the Consortium were stating that they would inject £100m into the business as well as improving its future. For them to leave this mess and potentially dump it into administration risking 2,000 jobs that they emphasised that they would save less than 1 year later just shows how bent this whole Consortium takeover was.

For anyone wondering about legal action it is still very active and options are being explored.

As you can imagine this is a lengthy process and therefore patience is needed.

For anyone who was in communication with the email address that was advertised on this board then you should expect to receive an update in the near future.

Those are nominee accounts Afaik. Unless a form 8.3 is released to confirm it is hard to tell.

Then the conclusion is that either the board were completely inept, or NDAs were breached. I'm not entirely sure the board would want to create a fuss. Afterall, we know that their employment was guaranteed by the Consortium. This could potentially be a breach of the following: Companies Act 2006 section 176 which stipulates that:

'A director of a company must not accept a benefit from a third party conferred by reason of—

(a)his being a director'

We do not know what other benefits may have come/ be coming the way of the board and therefore it certainly warrants an investigation as this is certainly a highly unusual transaction.

Sorry, I don't seem to understand your point? I don't see how an NDA can be a red herring, they are legally binding documents. NDAs in no way justify bidding parties approaching acquirers, lessors, creditors etc to form their own arrangements. In doing so that is sharing potentially confidential information. Furthermore, on 9th of January the board notified the Consortium that the board was aware they had come together. If they had known sooner, then the board allowed a false market to develop. However, your claim that the board knew beforehand has no evidence to support it.

Moreover, we know that Evercore turned away other proposals anyway for reasons that remain unknown.

Jerseycrew: I fear for the employees too, as per the scheme document 'headcount reductions' are likely as seen on page 18 of the following Connect Airways Scheme document: https://www.flybeplc.com/application/files/5615/4990/4221/2019.02.07_-_Flybe_Scheme_Document.pdf

A lot of employees were also shareholders and so have lost out badly on this offer. The AIM is where you would expect these kind of antics, but a premium listing on the LSE is not the place for this scheming activity. This sets a terrible precedent for investments in the UK. We know that large investment firms (Standard Life, Hosking etc.) have also lost a lot of money from this deal and I'm sure a lot of firms will be thinking twice about the LSE in future if this kind of thing can happen so easily. The SEC in USA offers far more security than this and I believe this does not bode well for UK investments.

Aphrodite: The clue is in the name 'non-disclosure agreement.' Have a look for yourself, the NDAs between Flybe and Virgin and Flybe and Stobart/Cyrus is on Flybe's website. Here is a link to the Virgin-Flybe NDA: https://www.flybeplc.com/application/files/3615/4746/5692/Virgin_Atlantic_NDA_.pdf.

You will see that they were not allowed to share confidential information to third parties including information between Stobart/Cyrus and Virgin. Should the directors have waived this it would be extremely negligent.

Nice strawman there. I never said that Flybe released an RNS saying other parties were turned away. It is actually found in the GM circular dated 22nd February 2019 which states:

'Flybe received a number of expressions of interest both before and after the announcement
of the Formal Sale Process. These expressions of interest included proposals for the acquisition
of Flybe as a whole and also for parts of the business or certain assets. After initial discussions
with the interested parties, Flybe shortlisted a smaller number of potential offerors to conduct
initial due diligence based on a range of criteria, including deliverability, financial capability
and strategic fit. The selected potential offerors were asked to submit proposals for Flybe and
subsequently Flybe entered into detailed discussions with a small number of parties.'

I have never once said anything has been illegal. What has happened has been a highly unusual transaction which warrants further investigation. Why was the NDA signed by each individual bidder waived? Why was Virgin and Stobart then able to negotiate with lessors and credit card facilities before any deal had been agreed? At what point was the NDA waived allowing Virgin and Stobart to team up and why again was the NDA waived?

You are pointing to 'conspiracy theories' which as we see from the above are actually facts. My points have been backed by both primary and secondary sources, whereas your 'rudimentary challenges' have brought forward nothing to back up your claims. 'Have you ever worked in a PLC?' is no challenge. The facts above show that other parties were turned away.

Any investigation into what has happened will likely show the board to have made many failings. At the minimum it will at least expose their failings and therefore reduce the chances of them ever going near a board again. It is hard to see how the Consortium will keep Widener on for a long time.

Of course we do not know what the terms of the loan were! Your point about information from insiders being unverifiable is exactly why an independent verification in the form of Kohn should be sought. We know as a fact that other parties were interested in Flybe back in November but were turned away due to unknown reasons. This has been confirmed via the circular.

The very claim that 'insiders' have claimed there were other options available is enough cause for concern. Hosking have confirmed that the board have been giving conflicting information about the whole sales process and it is now unsurprising that the board is seeking to wind up the company very quickly.

It was the Telegraph.

Their sources quoted 'insider' information. They are the best third party sources of information we have at the moment as the RNS released are very limited in what knowledge is shared. Of course the board would not be willing to state that there were other options available in the form of aircraft lessors. It makes perfect sense that aircraft lessors would be willing to prop Flybe up. Afterall, the market for second hand Q400 leases is hardly in abundance with a lot of smaller airlines collapsing. Good luck finding another airline willing to take on 10s of Q400s As we know, as at 31st March 2018 Flybe had 55 Q400s with a lot of them being leased. No way could lessors find a market for those planes and therefore a Flybe collapse would have devastated those lessors. Ultimately, Flybe had negotiating power over its suppliers which it never utilised, as demonstrated by the fact that lessors had tens of millions standing by.

With all the information we currently have, it is fair to state that there were other options available to the board.

It was a certain paid article from a well known newspaper that requires a paid subscription. They get very funny about people posting info from their articles online.

In the circular released by the board discouraging shareholders from voting against the 1p a share deal for the PLC, they have stated that ‘the Flybe Directors intend to take steps to wind-up the Company.'

However, they have failed to state that shareholders would have to approve this winding up process, as the gov.uk website states that it needs 75% of shareholder approval in order to wind the company up.

Please see following link for info: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/guide-to-liquidation-winding-up-for-directors/guide-to-liquidation-winding-up-for-directors

The board are far too eager to get everything wrapped up, and in the process, prevent any investigation or questioning into what happened.

Jerseycrew, it has actually come out that two aircraft lessors were willing to make tens of millions available in loans 'within hours' in order to prop Flybe up. We now know from the Constrium 'bridge loan' that only £15m was needed in order to keep Flybe afloat. There were other alternative options available, just the Flybe board went out of their way to reject every other possible option in favour of the Connect arrangement.

The rejection of the deal will allow time for Kohn to be installed as chairman. This will hopefully allow Kohn to carry out his investigation. They cannot wind up the company without the approval of the shareholders. Remember, Connect have to pay £2.8m to Flybe PLC for the purchase of subsidiaries.

If they reject the offer in an early rns tomorrow morning it will show they have given 0 consideration to offer. Imo the board have been disgraced. If they accept this new offer they will have some serious explaining to do as to why their actions caused them to end up with this 1p a share offer. If they reject the deal then they will have serious explaining to do as to why they've rejected every other offer which has been better. Either way, I can never see this board ever getting a high position role in a company ever again.

The board's position will be completely untenable if they reject this offer. It is now clear that there were a large number of parties competing to shore up Flybe. They are going to have an extremely hard time trying to explain why that nominal offer from Cyrus, Virgin and Stobart (which didn't have shareholder approval) was the best option. This offer even offers to inject £120m into Flybe compared to the £100m offered by the other Virgin led consortium.

So the RNS announces that they will take steps to wind up and close down the PLC holding company if the vote is no.

Given that the the EGM will be announced no later than 21st February 2019 and the subsequent EGM will likely be held 28 days after the 21st February it seems that they've made the date of the vote for the sale well before Kohn can ever be appointed. Are the board trying to wind up the PLC long before Kohn can get in and do his investigation?

Given that the PLC will still have to maintain the records of the trading subs even after it has sold I hope this can in some way be investigated long before anything is wound up and evidence gotten rid of. They have now finally confirmed that other parties were involved in negotiations to buy part of all of Flybe and we are still none the wiser as to why the other offers were rejected.Of course we have also received no Q3 trading update which has historically been on 31st January 2019 and we still do not know the true situation. Smoke and mirrors from the board as usual.

My understanding is that the consortium are buying the trading subs for £2.8m as a separate transaction. Subsequently, they will then purchase the holding company Flybe Group Plc for £2.2m which will be payment to the shareholders.

A. Smith note that this vote is not about whether the employees will be made redundant or not. The employees will be employed by the trading subs and NOT the holding company.