[cwoodward]

Chinese group Fosun the former largest shareholder of the failed group some months ago paid Pounds 11 million for the failed TC trademark and some brands in a deal which also includes hotel brands Casa Cook and Cook’s Club. The purchase gives Fosun access to Thomas Cook trademarks, websites, social media accounts and software across most of the world.

Fosun’s intention is to add the brands to itslarge HK listed diverse Fosun International Group that has substantial tourism and hotel interests and also owns Club Med.
Fosun is not an airline operator (for now -Hong Kong airlines perhaps ?) and did not purchase the still trading TC airline interests.
Fosun’s travel and tourism interests will be grouped together and re-branded as Thomas Cook, with the initial aim of lureing travelers – particularly those in Europe familiar with the name to the company’s hotels and resorts around the world.
Fosun’s chairman Qian Jiannong, said last week “The group has always believed in the brand value of Thomas Cook” thus it will be interesting to see how the spring relaunch of Thomas Cook fairs and how many new assets will be added to this new Thomas Cook business group.
One thing that is certain is Fosun do not lack funding or ambition.

[LuganoPirate]

Will be nice to see the name again. Funnily I just found a £ 10 TC travellers cheque from c. 1985 in some old papers. I guess it’s now worthless. Perhaps i should frame it??

[SwissExPat]

@ LP…

Perhaps not !!

Many years ago, I was involved in the purchase and sale of a travel Group who had issued Travellers Cheques (“TCs”) for many years. The Company had an entry on their balance sheet for the nominal (face value) of the traveller cheques that it had issued but had not been re-presented for payment this was in the order of hundreds of millions of US$. Naturally, it is ‘possible’ that every cheque could be re-presented for immediate payment so the ‘prudent’ thing to do is to hold a relerve or liability for 100% of this amount.

However, the entity had many years of experience in showing that approximately 10% to 15% of TCs issues are never re-presented and hence this was an element of profit. (I guess many end up in safe deposit boxes or down the back of a sofa etc. The problem was that the entity purchasing the TCs issuer was cautious and pointed out that all these “could” be re-presented and hence no ‘discount’ could be given on the liability, hence a lower purchase price was suggested.

Eventyally the parties agreed somewhere in the middle (after my Company had offered to ‘insure’ the risk for a price)

I’d expect that your TC would be valid and en-cashable!

1 user thanked author for this post.

LuganoPirate

[Author]

Posts