BUSINESS NEWS


Travel entrepreneur Clive Jacobs believes a £400m rescue deal he drew up with Terry Fisher in 2011-12 could have eased Thomas Cook’s debts and given the group a sustainable strategy


Cook ‘failed to grasp rescue chance in 2012’


Travel giant need not have failed, says Clive Jacobs. He spoke to Ian Taylor


Te problems that brought down Tomas Cook go back more than a decade and surfaced spectacularly in 2011 when the group’s share price collapsed following three profit warnings in 12 months. Cook’s share price fell from a high of £2.59 in March 2010 to 14p at the end of 2011, leaving the group valued at a fraction of the £900 million debt it carried. Clive Jacobs, owner and chairman


of Travel Weekly parent Jacobs Media Group and founder of leisure car rental business Holiday Autos, believes he saw a way to save the company and drew up a rescue plan


80 3 OCTOBER 2019 COLLAPSE


THOMAS COOK


with former senior Tomas Cook executive Terry Fisher. Jacobs said: “In 2011, Terry and


I felt prety strongly that Tomas Cook would fail unless there was involvement from someone who understood what the problems were and how to deal with them. “We started working on this


around November 2011 when the share price had collapsed and set out to raise money. I put in a seven-figure


sum, as did Terry. We went to major investors in Tomas Cook. “One of the biggest at the time


was investment group Invesco. Terry and I met [Invesco’s then head of UK equities] Neil Woodford, who was a star fund manager at the time. He was prepared to write a cheque for £200 million – half the £400 million we believed we needed. We met other shareholders and got the necessary commitments. “Why did we get the commitments? We recognised the problem in the


Continued on page 78 travelweekly.co.uk


BUSINESS NEWS


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