Crikey at the first Ansett creditors' meeting
By Stephen Mayne
January 17, 2008
This was sent to Crikey subscribers shortly after the Ansett creditors meeting in January 2002.
None of the newspaper coverage of the Ansett creditors' meeting really captured the feeling of the meeting. Firstly, the whole thing was a PR stunt and captured by the unions who have done their level best to shaft all the other creditors, most notably the frequent flyers.
Unionists got their early and grabbed all the key seats near the stage and, more importantly, near the two microphones down the front. ACTU secretary Greg Combet, Prime Ministerial wannabe Bill Shorten (AWU) and Smithy from the ASU all lined up early to give their rhetorical support to the dodgy Tesna deal with those bottom fishers Lindsay Fox and Solly Lew.
If you wanted to criticise all these sweetheart union deals you had climb down from the stands actually walk onto the tennis court only to get heckled by the unionists who are getting 100 cents in the dollar for their entitlements which are worth about $700 million.
Because they claimed to be the largest creditor, the workers, represented by the ACTU, were able to sack the previous administrators Price Waterhouse Coopers and get the union-friendly Marks from Arthur Andersen, that esteemed firm which has been shredding Enron documents, was the HIH auditor who signed accounts in October 2000 saying the insurer had net assets of almost $1 billion and is also getting sued over the Bond Corp audit.
The unions clearly have the numbers on the 32-person creditors committee because Diners Club CEO Brian Ericson has only just been invited to join on behalf of millions of frequent flyer members.
I asked about the $10 million in fees going to Arthur Andersen and a subsequent frequent flyer asked why the resolution to approve the latest round of fees had been dropped from the agenda.
The Marks said this was just to save time and the fees had been approved by the creditors committee (and who has got the numbers on that?).
As we all now know, the 70 billion frequent flyer points were only on the Ansett books at $140 million when the retail value was really about $800 million. The points holders should have been calling the shots along with the unions but did not get themselves organised quickly enough.
As a result, the workers are getting 100 cents in the dollar and, in some cases, large redundancy payouts for people already in new jobs. Contrast that with someone who had spent $20,000 accruing 100,000 points and will get probably get a payout of about $5 from the administrator over the next 3 years.
Assurances from the administrators that Lindsay Fox was promising to make them "very very happy" was cold comfort when so much uncertainty now surrounds the Tesna bid after the January 31 sale deadline was missed.
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