Tugger

I don't care how much a company pays its staff. I just want a cheap and decent service

The owners borrowed too much money to pay for this business. It's their fault, not Mezeron's. Take it up with them.

Tugger, the interest repayments are made to Macquarie, which err... owns the Racket. Go figure! I'm not sure that's true.

I don't have the inside track on the numbers, but I would guess that the biggest cost that the Racket group has to deal with is interest repayments, and minimising trips doesn't address that point

Indeed, but it has nothing to do with a relaxation of company laws - the ability of the operating company to mortgage its assets was not what persuaded the banks to lend £200m, because the mortgageable assets are worth a fraction of that. It is not a question of whether the owners want to keep the company going and keep the user agreemetn, but whether the lenders are prepared to let them remain as owners.

The User Agreement is non-assignable, so worthless in the hands of a mortgagee of a company's assets. It is only useful if you acquire the company's shares. Plus if you think this mob wouldn't sign the stat dec for a whitewash then you have a higher opinion of them than I do

Yay, well done Alias, one line to address the real point, which Barrie couldn't find in forty. The shares in the Racket will be the security that the banks want to realise, not the fucking Ben

I agree, but the reality is that with a freight competitor the Racket is not worth £200m any more. It appears to be finding it difficult to service its debts and if that is the case it will default on its loan. The banks can either take that on the chin or force a sale. Of course they can place a 200m reserve on it, but only if they want to guarantee that it won't sell.

I think the level of indebtedness of the operating company itself is open to debate, hboy. I agree (without reading his comments in detail) that Cannan his talking bollocks (all the evidence I need is that his lips are moving), but I reckon the Aussies are, in the end, going to have to sell, and they are going to have to sell for less than they paid. Conceivably that might be a point where government ownership is an option (though Christ, I really really hope not).

They're not that good. Let's face it it's not rocket science, and yet they still seem to have all sorts of problems like crashing into oil tankers or collapsing gangways

By going public he has played it incredibly badly. He will lose his job and the Aussies will lose this company

The difference is between HAVING to make a return RIGHT NOW (in order to make inflexible debt repayments), or being able to reduce margins for a while (or indeed indefinitely) because shareholders don't get paid unless you make money. The private equity LBO model only stacked up if the competition on freight was minimal. Quite simply, they appear to have borrowed too much. It's not Woodward's fault, it's the owners', but I think we can expect to see a change of ownership at some point in the future

I think the User Agreement is working just fine. The Racket seems to think otherwise

Because they're not made on the back of a government-imposed monopoly. And noone feels the impact of them so directly. The Racket are asking for some sort of protection from competition from the government, or worse, money. They deserve neither

Call his fucking bluff, I say

If they don't take passengers, they don't get to use the linkspan. I don't think that the Ben etc would compete against Mezeron without access to that, especially when there would be a third company in the market that was granted access to the linkspan

No, they should not. The spirit of the agreement is not more important than the letter. If it was "spirit" they were after they could have done it on a handshake. In order to comply with what you see as the "spirit" of the agreement the government would have to step in and actively prevent a commercial enterprise doing something that it is completely at liberty to do today. I do not want this government turning round and deciding that businesses that are entirely legitimate one day should be closed down the next, certainly not to protect the spurious benefits afforded to us by the User Agreement. The issue is as simple as this: freight customers have been gouged by the Steam Packet in order to meet the debt repayments made by its owners. That situation is not going to continue because freight owners now have an alternative. There will continue to be a market for mixed freight and passenger traffic from the island to Ireland and the UK, but it will not be as profitable for the Steam Packet, or whoever else we end up with. The people who bought the Steam Packet need to take this one on the chin, I'm afraid: the alternative is that we will, and I do not find it acceptable that the Manx public should pay the cost of a poor investment decision by professional investors.

Oh God what a desperate attempt to cover up your woeful lack of knowledge and experience. What has any part of your dreary anecdote got to do with a director giving a personal guarantee. Let me spell it out for you once again, you stupid, dreary man: DIRECTORS' PERSONAL GUARANTEES ARE CALLED WHEN A COMPANY IS INSOLVENT. DIRECTORS WHO GIVE THEM WILL NOT BE COVERED BY THE COMPANY

My God, you are utterly, utterly clueless. What do you think a company's financial state is likely to be if a creditor is calling in a director's personal guarantee? Directors sign personal guarantees when they own the company, in order to be able to get credit, or get cheaper credit. Otherwise, they don't (unless they're stupid). If you were a director, you would probably give personal guarantees whether or not you owned the company.

I am going to petition IOM Newspapers to reinstate "Your Shout". Until then ... size="7"]PLEASE GO AWAY [[/size]

Are there that many local staff on the boats nowadays anyway. It's a while since I've been on the Ben but there's no shortage of foreign staff on the other boats

Oh my God, you pointless little prick

LOL - he may have eventually put me on ignore after stalking me with PMs for months (although I expect he hasn't really, he just professes to have). Tragic little man ...

I knew that there would be dire consequences to the end of "Your Shout" on iomtoday.co.im, and here is the living embodiment of those consequences, Barrie Stevens. Finally, P.K. has someone who will give him a run for his money in talking unadulterated shite with absolute self-confidence.