Thomas Cook shares amassed by Neset Kockar

All,

Neset Kockar - Turkish hotelier and tourism airline operator is aggressively buying Thomas Cook shares. He crossed the 5% threshold last night and is now at 6.7%.

Tomas believes he has been in the mix to buy the Condor business.

Exactly what he is hoping to influence in the shares and who is advising him to buy them remains unclear. The shares are surely cheap, but he must have paid at least £5m so far.

His Turkish “Zen" and “Life” hotel chains are exposed to Thomas Cook, although we don’t know how much. This would explain why he may have tried to secure the Condor business. Also, from his perspective (perhaps) an acquisition of Thomas Cook by Fosun would take his Turkey based business in the middle and likely cause him severe competition. So if he can’t get Condor, he may just be looking to become big enough to block a consensual shareholder vote / put pressure on management not to give too easy a deal to Fosun.

Ultimately, our legal analysis still points clearly to the possibility of restructuring Thomas Cook without shareholder consent in a pre-pack administration. This feels a lot like Mike Ashley buying 30% of Debenhams - only later.

Wolfgang