Thomas Cook India declined slightly on collapse of Group Plc
As Thomas Cook Plc. collapsed with a debt pile, Thomas Cook India has been looked at with doubtful eyes for the last few days. The shares of the company continued to trade in red.
Thomas Cook Group Plc. is a British travel giant operating in two segments as a tour operator and an airline operator. Since 2018, the company has been facing poor financial health and business issues. In early 2019, the company tried to separate its airline business and thus closed many of its travel offices after reporting losses for the first half of the year. Around midnight on September 23, airports in the UK began to impound aircrafts of Thomas Cook upon arrival, citing ‘default in payment of airport charges’ as the reason and thus leaving hundreds of passengers stranded. On September 23, the Thomas Cook Group Plc went into a compulsory liquidation, dragging financial troubles for its independent units Condor and Thomas Cook GmbH as well.
After this news surfaced, negative media comments sparked fears about Thomas Cook India. Post that, the company has been busy communicating to exchanges, media and local newspaper advertisements that the collapsed U.K. firm had exited the Indian company seven years ago. The company also put a statement on Twitter which read as ‘Thomas Cook PLC (UK) has no relationship with Thomas Cook India as we were acquired by Canada based Fairfax Financial Holdings (Fairfax) in 2012. We are completely independent of Thomas Cook UK & hence the news of their situation does not impact us. Please be reassured that all your bookings and transactions will continue to be smooth and we look forward to having you enjoy your trip with Thomas Cook India.’ The stock of the company fell for four consecutive days since the news-break.
Despite the company’s clarification to the exchanges and credit rating agency CRISIL’s stance on the travel company to be unaffected by the bankruptcy of Thomas Cook PLC in United Kingdom, on Friday, the stock was trading at Rs. 138.7, down by 1.18 per cent or Rs. 1.65 per share. The 52-week high is Rs. 263.85 and 52-week low is Rs. 121 on BSE.