SilverJet Is Up for Sale
Apr 10th, 2008 | By Jared BlankSilverJet, the struggling all-business class airline, is apparently up for sale. The company’s shares shot up 43% on word that the carrier is in talks to be acquired. I cannot agree more with the analyst who summed up the situation thusly: “If any prospective bidder does proper due diligence we see a strong probability that they will decide not to bid.” Ouch.
The largest hunk of b.s. in the story comes from a fund manager who just happens to manage SilverJet shares and notes, “It would be a shame if just as the company gets within a hair’s breadth of proving the model somebody came out and managed to get it at a low price…” Hair’s breadth? If they were a month from profitability, wouldn’t that be evident in the due diligence process? Wouldn’t people be jumping at the chance of picking up a profitable company for a song? And why would management be looking to sell the airline for nothing even though it’s ever-so-close to profitability? Shouldn’t shareholders be revolting?
All signs point toward this fact: If they don’t get bought, and that’s not looking likely, we will see a couple of hundred people stuck in Luton trying to get back to Dubai and New York.