Triage for Bankrupt Companies

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lpm
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Triage for Bankrupt Companies

Post by lpm » Wed Mar 18, 2020 11:29 am

It is quicker to work out who isn’t bankrupt than who is.

Not bankrupt:

Public sector
Healthcare suppliers
Supermarket and food suppliers
Utilities
Vets and similar must-haves

At risk of bankruptcy:

Every other company who hasn't enough cash on hand to survive a year with only minimal revenues.

There are two requirements to consider in triage decision making:

1) What does this country need to keep going for the next year, whether loss making or not
2) What will the country need to resurrect a year's time, and if needed how easily can it be reborn

Based on this the govt can decide on who to save, who to mothball and who to let die.

For example, a mass market travel company, that we can call Fui. Need for next year? No. Need in a year's time? No, was already a struggling industry. Let it die.

Local restaurant. Need for next year? No. Need in a year's time? Yes, but these things are easily reborn. Let it die.

Exporter of electronic car components. Need for next year? No. Need in a year's time? Yes, and these sorts of things are very hard to start up. Keep alive and ready to spring back into life.
Last edited by Stephanie on Thu May 14, 2020 10:28 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Triage for Bankrupt Companies

Post by sTeamTraen » Wed Mar 18, 2020 11:38 am

Fui can go, but we need a decent chunk of the aviation industry to survive. (I suppose one of the upsides of all this is that airlines that have been waiting for the 737-MAX8 deliveries can stop wondering how they will cope without that extra capacity.)
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lpm
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Re: Triage for Bankrupt Companies

Post by lpm » Wed Mar 18, 2020 11:47 am

But aviation capacity means planes, trained pilots and engineers, established procedures like testing and air traffic control. Does it realistically also mean aviation companies? If Virgin Atlantic goes bust, the planes and pilots don't vanish. This is an expensive company to keep alive, even mothballed, and this is triage - we can't have everything.

Plus, I doubt we'll ever again see the scale of air travel that existed in Ancient Times - 2019 will be the forever peak.
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El Pollo Diablo
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Re: Triage for Bankrupt Companies

Post by El Pollo Diablo » Wed Mar 18, 2020 11:52 am

Thing is, you also need to bear in mind the cost of people being out of work, mass defaulting on mortgages, rises in homelessness, etc.
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Re: Triage for Bankrupt Companies

Post by Sciolus » Wed Mar 18, 2020 12:06 pm

lpm wrote:
Wed Mar 18, 2020 11:47 am
But aviation capacity means planes, trained pilots and engineers, established procedures like testing and air traffic control. Does it realistically also mean aviation companies? If Virgin Atlantic goes bust, the planes and pilots don't vanish. This is an expensive company to keep alive, even mothballed, and this is triage - we can't have everything.
Alitalia, which has been failing for as long as anyone can remember, has just been nationalised, and there are rumours that Air France may be too. LPM is correct that this is utterly stupid and it has caused fury among Italians of my acquaintance.

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Re: Triage for Bankrupt Companies

Post by Pucksoppet » Wed Mar 18, 2020 12:08 pm

El Pollo Diablo wrote:
Wed Mar 18, 2020 11:52 am
Thing is, you also need to bear in mind the cost of people being out of work, mass defaulting on mortgages, rises in homelessness, etc.
I suspect people will be 'given' mortgage holidays, and the mortgage companies bailed out. But the mortgage is only one bill out of many, and people still need money for for food and utilities.
And dealing with mortgages doesn't help people in (private) rented accommodation.
Enforcing the paying-off of asset-backed debt right now is silly, as it is just moving numbers around. The country as a whole needs the cashflow to maintain daily operations, where the money is used to distribute real physical goods and provide useful services (like nursing).

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Re: Triage for Bankrupt Companies

Post by lpm » Wed Mar 18, 2020 12:13 pm

People is easier than companies. Obviously all humans need to be kept financially alive, so no triage. Treatment for all.
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Re: Triage for Bankrupt Companies

Post by Gentleman Jim » Wed Mar 18, 2020 12:17 pm

A plea from Bill Maher /Real Time

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Re: Triage for Bankrupt Companies

Post by lpm » Wed Mar 18, 2020 12:19 pm

Expect to see very soon an announcement from companies that they will not disconnect you, or evict you, or penalise you for late payments.

Why? Because the govt is about to make this law, same as in other countries. Which means a free PR boost for companies that announce before this, getting nice headlines. "We at Sky make you, the British people, this promise - we will not cut off your TV and broadband even if you struggle to pay your bill. Just let us know and we'll let you pay after the crisis is over*. Sky, a wonderful company always on your side."



*You will still owe us the money. We will collect after the crisis. We're still capitalists, end of the day.
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Re: Triage for Bankrupt Companies

Post by Pucksoppet » Wed Mar 18, 2020 12:40 pm

lpm wrote:
Wed Mar 18, 2020 12:19 pm
Expect to see very soon an announcement from companies that they will not disconnect you, or evict you, or penalise you for late payments.

Why? Because the govt is about to make this law, same as in other countries. Which means a free PR boost for companies that announce before this, getting nice headlines. "We at Sky make you, the British people, this promise - we will not cut off your TV and broadband even if you struggle to pay your bill. Just let us know and we'll let you pay after the crisis is over*. Sky, a wonderful company always on your side."



*You will still owe us the money*. We will collect after the crisis. We're still capitalists, end of the day.
*plus interest, if we can get away with it.

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Re: Triage for Bankrupt Companies

Post by EACLucifer » Wed Mar 18, 2020 12:47 pm

Sky are, as of last time I checked, refusing to allow pub landlords to cancel their extremely expensive deals without the usual 3-month notice, despite not actually having any of the sports content said landlords signed up for in the first place any more.

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Re: Triage for Bankrupt Companies

Post by lpm » Wed Mar 18, 2020 12:57 pm

Yes, there's a lot of companies stuck in the norms of Ancient Times.

You know how companies and LinkedIn profiles like to go on about agile they are? Dynamic! Fast moving! Adaptable! This has shown this is all b.llsh.t.

All these directors who pay themselves millions, but are now exposing their inadequacy in the face of change.
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Re: Triage for Bankrupt Companies

Post by headshot » Wed Mar 18, 2020 1:03 pm

I'm currently negotiating with companies who paid us deposits for this year's tours.

I'm asking if they can allow us to keep the deposit and roll it through to 2021, or if they need it back whether we can spread the burden and I can refund them 80% of what they paid, given that we've spent a lot of money on the marketing that they have received but not used.

One company has told us that we should have ring-fenced the deposits in case this sort of thing happened and that they want the full amount. They have already invoiced me for this - despite receiving £400+ worth of printed materials.

FFS.

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lpm
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Re: Triage for Bankrupt Companies

Post by lpm » Wed Mar 18, 2020 1:10 pm

Triage it. You are on the battlefield with 3 casualties and can only treat 1.

Do not pay back money to companies that are going to die whatever. Pay companies that will find your intervention useful and will hopefully survive to 2021 and be involved again in future years. Don't pay companies that will be fine and don't need your treatment.
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Re: Triage for Bankrupt Companies

Post by Rich Scopie » Wed Mar 18, 2020 2:02 pm

EACLucifer wrote:
Wed Mar 18, 2020 12:47 pm
Sky are, as of last time I checked, refusing to allow pub landlords to cancel their extremely expensive deals without the usual 3-month notice, despite not actually having any of the sports content said landlords signed up for in the first place any more.
Seems they can pause them now.

https://www.digitalspy.com/tv/a31725493 ... criptions/
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Re: Triage for Bankrupt Companies

Post by Bird on a Fire » Wed Mar 18, 2020 2:36 pm

Key industries that are essential for the functioning of the nation should be nationalised.

Government aid should prioritise workers: universal income, rent frozen, mortgages frozen, bills frozen, debt collection frozen. This in turn takes a lot of the pressure off small businesses.

Deprioritise compensation for investors. Investors are rewarded for taking on risks. On this occasion, the risk hasn't paid off.

We know from the response to the last crash that "trickle-down" doesn't work. Most QE money instead trickles out to tax havens. Workers are the engines of the economy, who need to be given the confidence that they can continue spending as normal. A second decade of austerity-like conditions would be disastrous.

This is only the first of many catastrophic environmental disasters that will blight the globe over the coming decades. There will be more novel zoonotic pandemics, enormous floods from sea-level rise, droughts on unprecedented scale, fires, storms, wave after wave of refugees, civil conflict and wars.

If anything good comes out of this tragedy, it will be a global awakening to the fact that the kind of mobilisation environmentalists have been demanding for decades is easily feasible. Asian countries are already closing their wildlife markets, for example, which have been driving countless species towards extinction - and have been highlighted as disease risks for decades.

Trillions of dollars can be found to pay for things. Non-essential travel is indeed non-essential. Resources can be redirected: labour, commodities, government spending. Air and water pollution can clear up overnight. And the working classes can now see that they can crash an entire economy just by not turning up.
We have the right to a clean, healthy, sustainable environment.

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Re: Triage for Bankrupt Companies

Post by lpm » Wed Mar 18, 2020 2:48 pm

I've started a new thread on Helicopter Money on how to keep humans kept financially alive and what treatment "financially ill" people should get. It's obviously linked in some ways - but the decision process is very different.

Just because people have money doesn't mean they will spend it, certainly not on things they are banned from.
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