Cendant to Buy Web Travel Site Orbitz for $1.25 Bln (Update4) Listen
Sept. 29 (Bloomberg) -- Cendant Corp., the world's largest hotel franchiser, agreed to buy Internet travel agency Orbitz Inc. for $1.25 billion, becoming the second-biggest competitor in the expanding online travel market.

Cendant will pay $27.50 a share for Chicago-based Orbitz, a 32 percent premium over yesterday's closing price of $20.77, the companies said in a joint statement. Cendant will use proceeds from its June initial public offering of Jackson Hewitt, a tax preparation business, plus cash on hand for the acquisition.

http://quote.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=10000087&sid=a52mmWKmyL8g&refer=top_world_news

Interestingly enough I just coincidentally know 3 individuals that happen to have met or worked for Jeffrey Katz. As many of you might remember, Katz was the CEO of swissair when sr111 crashed in '98. One of them worked for Katz as an attorney and hated him so much he ended up quitting. Another interviewed for a job and was very interested until he met Jeffrey Katz. He thought he was so despicable and arrogant he decided to not take the job. One other was a person that posted on our old site. I have no idea why or how this person knew him. He reported that he was a scum and a liar. We remember his words well that were published in a book called Flight 111, written by Canadian writer Stephen Kimber. He said that on his way over to Canada after the crash his biggest concern was whether swissair as an airline could survive. The words really stung.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: BF,

So did swissair survive the crash? Well you would have thought so at the time as swissair's PR dept. was so good at spin they convinced the press that they themselves were a wonderful airline that suffered some terrible act of God. They boasted just a couple of weeks after the crash that it hadn't affected it's 'load factor' or stock. We knew from day 1 otherwise. Now what you hear over and over again is that swissair went out of business because of 9/11. IMHO an absolute lie. In fact the company went south because of the same reason that the plane crashed taking 229 precious human beings with it. Extremely poor, greedy management. They were the people who decided to buy the IFEN (entertainment system) from an unknown, inexperienced, sleazy company in Arizona. They were also the same management that bought up failing airlines, and expanded into other businesses which eventually put so much strain on the flag carrier financially that it had no way to go but down.

Swissair chiefs "ignored warnings" of collapse

swissinfo February 12, 2003 6:26 PM




The writing was on the wall for Swissair years before the airline collapsed.

The final report into the collapse of Swissair shows that management knew the airline was in serious trouble but did nothing to prevent its collapse.

The report was leaked to the "Tages Anzeiger" newspaper as creditors learned they would receive only a fraction of the SFr22.7 billion they claim they are owed.



The Ernst & Young report was due to be issued on Wednesday to Swissair creditors, who were told on the same day that they would receive just SFr472 million ($345 million) from Swissair.

The newspaper said it had obtained a copy of the report, which contained "explosive" allegations that warning signs had been ignored at the highest levels of Swissair and its parent company, SAirGroup.

It could prove an even more damning indictment of Swissair management than a preliminary report released last month, which blamed a mixture of management incompetence and lack of aviation experience for the airline's downfall two years ago.

swissinfo contacted Wenger Plattner, the law firm overseeing Swissair's liquidation, but was told it could not comment on the report's findings.


"The agreed budgets were all exceeded, but even then there was no attempt made to put things right."

Ernst & Young report



"Scandalous"

"The final report shows that Swissair management behaved in a more scandalous manner than hitherto believed," the Tages Anzeiger said.

It said the report had concluded that it was already "crystal clear" by the summer of 2000 that without decisive action Swissair would not survive the disastrous effects of an expansion plan implemented by former chief, Philippe Bruggisser.

Despite that, management had continued its mistaken strategy.

"[The board] allowed Bruggisser to buy airlines in urgent need of modernisation at inflated prices," the paper quoted Ernst & Young as saying.

"The agreed budgets were all exceeded, but even then there was no attempt made to put things right."

Dictatorial style

The report quoted a leaked memo from former SAirGroup board member Lukas Mühlemann saying that Bruggisser had not accepted criticism and by 1998 "had become a dictator".

But despite that neither Mühlemann nor other members of the board had thought of having him removed until January 2001.

The report was also highly critical of Bruggisser's successor, Mario Corti, who it alleges knew about the perilous state of Swissair's finances months before taking over in 2001.

It said that instead of carrying out immediate restructuring and selling off unprofitable branches of the business, Corti charged commissioned consultants KPMG to come up with a modernisation concept.

KPMG was then paid millions of francs for coming to the same conclusions already drawn by earlier management consultancy reports, namely that Swissair could not survive without selling off considerable sections of the operation.

Ignored warnings

"Corti, like Bruggisser before him, totally ignored the warnings," the paper said.

There was also harsh criticism of the board's finance commission, which was supposed to monitor the concern's finances and bookkeeping.

According to the report, a majority of the commission members had no experience of dealing with company finances and had "failed in their duty" by doing nothing when it was made clear to them that the end of year results for 1999 and 2000 had been doctored.

swissinfo with agencies

http://www.swissinfo.org/sen/Swissinfo.html?siteSect=161&sid=1628250

http://www.swissinfo.org/sen/swissinfo.html?siteSect=105&sid=5258726

And not one mention of how swissair's failing expansion efforts and other decisions made by the management led to the deaths of 229 people. It's all about the money.