Formation In February 2007, it was announced that
Thomas Cook AG and
MyTravel Group plc were to merge. The companies announced they expected to make savings of over £75 million a year, following the integration of the two businesses. Under the terms of the merger, the owners of Thomas Cook AG, KarstadtQuelle (later
Arcandor), owned 52% of the new group. The shareholders of MyTravel Group owned the remaining 48% share. The merger was completed in June 2007, and took place through the formation of 'NewCo' which effectively purchased MyTravel and Thomas Cook and was then listed on the London Stock Exchange under the name of Thomas Cook Group plc.
2008–2009 On 14 February 2008, Thomas Cook bought booking website Hotels4U.com for £21.8 million. On 6 March 2008, the company bought back its licence to operate the Thomas Cook brand in the Middle East and Asia from the
Dubai Investment Group for an amount estimated to be around 249 million euros. In April 2008 Thomas Cook bought the luxury travel firm
Elegant Resorts from its founders Geoff Moss and Barbara Catchpole for an undisclosed figure. The company took over
Preston-based Gold Medal International, owner of
NetFlights, in a deal worth £87 million in December 2008. On 8 March 2009, Thomas Cook signed a deal with Octopus Media Technology to host, upload, and provide an online video player for Thomas Cook TV. In Spring 2009 Thomas Cook UK signed a deal with International Entertainment Supplier The E3 Group, to exclusively supply entertainment to the group. In June 2009, Thomas Cook's majority shareholder Arcandor filed for bankruptcy, although the group was not affected. , with the 2001–2013 logo of the company In 2010, the Thomas Cook Group reached an agreement with
The Co-operative Group to merge its branch network with that of
The Co-operative Travel. The merger was approved by the
Competition Commission in 2011, and the joint venture was 66.5% owned by the Thomas Cook Group, 30% owned by The Co-operative Group and 3.5% owned by the
Midlands Co-operative (renamed the
Central England Co-operative in 2014). The merger created the UK's largest travel network. Thomas Cook's
Going Places branded branches were rebranded under the Co-operative's brand. In May 2012,
Harriet Green was appointed as the chief executive officer of Thomas Cook Group, succeeding
Manny Fontenla-Novoa, who was CEO from 2003 until August 2011. On 1 July 2013, Thomas Cook announced that it would cease publishing the
Thomas Cook European Timetable, along with closure of the rest of its publishing business. The final edition of the timetable was published in August 2013, but publication resumed in early 2014 under a new publishing company not affiliated with Thomas Cook. In February 2014 Thomas Cook Group sold Gold Medal Travel, including Netflights.com, to
dnata for a reported £45 million. On 26 November 2014, it was announced that Green was leaving with immediate effect, and that COO
Peter Fankhauser would take over as CEO.
Inquest into carbon monoxide poisoning In October 2006, two young British children, Christianne and Robert Shepherd aged seven and six years old respectively, died from
carbon monoxide poisoning caused by a faulty boiler while on a holiday in
Corfu booked through Thomas Cook. They were the first such deaths in the company's history. Two Thomas Cook employees were subsequently amongst 11 defendants facing manslaughter by negligence charges at a criminal trial in Greece in 2010; both were acquitted and the company was cleared of any wrongdoing. In 2015, a UK inquest was held into the children's deaths; the jury returned a verdict of
unlawful killing and concluded that the travel group had "breached its duty of care". After the inquest,
The Mail on Sunday published a news story saying that Thomas Cook had received £3 million from the owners of the hotel where the children's deaths had occurred. In response, Thomas Cook made a charitable donation of £1.5m to
UNICEF. However, the children's family said that they had not been consulted about this donation, which became the subject of criticism. In UK newspaper
The Independent Joanna Bourke wrote: "Nothing Thomas Cook could ever do would bring back the two children killed by carbon monoxide poisoning on a Greek holiday in 2006. But the firm's handling of the case has been a lesson in how not to manage a crisis". In March 2017, Thomas Cook announced the sale of its Belgian airline operations to
Lufthansa. As a result,
Thomas Cook Airlines Belgium was shut down by November 2017 with two aircraft and all traffic rights being handed to
Brussels Airlines. Its three remaining aircraft were relocated to sister companies. In August 2018, a British couple, John and Susan Cooper, aged 69 and 63 respectively, died on a Thomas Cook holiday, while staying at the Steigenberger Aqua Magic in the Red Sea resort of
Hurghada. According to the Egyptian authorities, John died of a heart attack and Susan died of shock. The couple's daughter, also present at the resort, blamed the faulty air conditioning system at the resort. Thomas Cook hurriedly evacuated around 300 holidaymakers staying in the same hotel after other guests started to fall ill. In November 2018, business analysts suggested that Thomas Cook should split the business to help recover its financial health.
2019: Final year and collapse In February 2019, the
Financial Times newspaper said that the Thomas Cook Group had received bids for its airline business, which included
Condor, and also the company as a whole. In March 2019, Thomas Cook UK announced 21 travel office closures and the redundancy of 300 staff, justifying the decision with the fact that 64% of bookings had been made online in 2018. In May 2019, the company reported that it had secured £300 million of emergency funding from its banks. Then in May 2019, the company announced a loss of £1.5 billion for the first half of its financial year, with £1.1 billion of the loss being attributable to goodwill write-downs. In June 2019, Thomas Cook said that it was in talks with the Chinese company
Fosun International with regard to the possible sale of its tour operator business. On 28 August 2019, Thomas Cook announced that Fosun would pay £450 million for 75% of the firm's tour business and 25% of its airline. By September 2019, Thomas Cook Group was "the most
shorted company on the London Stock Exchange", and reports began to emerge that the company was "in last minute negotiations" with bondholders, in order to approve the Fosun takeover. Less than a week later, Thomas Cook asked
HM Government to fund a £200 million gap in the company's finances to prevent the firm falling into
administration. The company had by that point secured £900m in funding as part of a
debt-for-equity swap, including £450m from Fosun. Despite this, a late demand is reported to have emerged from the Group's funders, including
Royal Bank of Scotland and
Halifax, This demand meant the group needed an extra £200 million of funding to keep the company operational. Media reports had earlier indicated that a group, including the Turkish government and a group of Spanish hoteliers backed by Spanish ministers, had offered financial support in order to assist their domestic industries, but that rescue had failed because "the British government said it was not prepared to provide any financial guarantees to underpin the funding package." A final failed attempt to prevent the Thomas Cook Group from administration or liquidation took place the evening of 22 September 2019. At around midnight on 23 September, airports in the UK began to impound Thomas Cook aircraft upon arrival, citing "default in payment of airport charges". Shortly after 02:00
BST, the
Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) announced that the Thomas Cook Group had entered liquidation and ceased operations with immediate effect, leaving around 600,000 tourists overseas. The collapse of the company marked the end of a brand name that had been in continuous use since 1841. The collapse triggered an operation initiated by the CAA, aiming to repatriate 150,000 British citizens from abroad. The operation was codenamed 'Operation Matterhorn' and overtook the
2017 collapse of Monarch Airlines as the UK's biggest peacetime repatriation. Around 40 aircraft from various airlines, including
easyJet and
Virgin Atlantic, as well as at least one
Airbus A380 from
Malaysia Airlines, were chartered. Insurance companies took care of customers from Germany, one of the former company's biggest markets. David McHugh of
CTV News reported that there were many factors that led to the collapse: a high debt load of £1.6 billion ($2 billion) combined with a changing travel market and online competition, events such as terrorist attacks in tourist destinations
including Tunisia, the
European heat wave in 2018, uncertainty caused by
Brexit, and high fuel costs.
Post-collapse On 9 October 2019, independent travel agent
Hays Travel announced that it had acquired all 555 former Thomas Cook travel stores in the UK, and planned to re-employ a "significant number" of former employees. Meanwhile, on 30 October 2019, an investment consortium consisting of Norwegian property tycoon
Petter Stordalen and private equity firms
Altor and
TDR Capital announced that they had acquired the assets of Thomas Cook Northern Europe (also known as the Ving Group) including the Ving, Spies and Tjäreborg travel agencies, Thomas Cook Airlines Scandinavia, and the Sunwing and Sunprime hotel brands, with Stordalen and Altor owning 40% each and TDR Capital owning the remaining 20%. Thomas Cook Airlines Scandinavia was then rebranded as
Sunclass Airlines. There were reports on 31 October 2019 that Swiss-based investment firm LMEY Investments intended to re-acquire the Aldiana hotel brand, which it jointly owned with Thomas Cook, by buying Thomas Cook's 42% minority shareholding. Fosun International purchased the Thomas Cook name and logo, along with the Casa Cook and Cook's Club hotel brands, for £11 million on 1 November 2019. Thomas Cook Germany announced that it would close down on 1 December 2019, after having failed to find a buyer, with administrators in talks to sell Thomas Cook Germany's tour operators Öger Tours, Bucher Reisen, Neckermann and Air Marin and find buyers for hotel brands Sentido and Smartline. Neşet Koçkar, the chairman of Turkish tour operator Anex Tours, acquired Russian tour operator
Intourist from Thomas Cook's liquidators on 15 November 2019. Meanwhile, Anex Tours acquired Thomas Cook Germany's tour operators Öger Tours and Bucher Reisen, saving 84 jobs, on 21 November 2019. Anex Tours also acquired the trademark rights for tour operator Neckermann Reisen from Thomas Cook Germany's liquidators on 2 January 2020. The German travel group DER Touristik acquired the Sentido hotel brand, with the deal subject to antitrust approval, on 4 December 2019. Thomas Cook Balearics had closed down after becoming insolvent on 26 December 2019. On 24 January 2020, it was announced that Polish carrier
LOT Polish Airlines had acquired German airline Condor, with the acquisition expected to be completed by April 2020 once antitrust approval had been secured. However, on 13 April 2020, it was announced that LOT Polish Airlines had withdrawn its offer to acquire German airline Condor, with the German government agreeing to support Condor with emergency liquidity. The German airline Thomas Cook Aviation filed for bankruptcy due to the
COVID-19 pandemic on 2 April 2020. On 16 September 2020,
Fosun International relaunched Thomas Cook as
Thomas Cook Holidays, an online travel company with 50 employees. ==Corporate affairs==