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Hays Travel paid just £6m for 555 Thomas Cook stores

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Thomas Cook
BERLIN, GERMANY - SEPTEMBER 23: The Thomas Cook logo hangs over a Thomas Cook travel agency store on September 23, 2019 in Berlin, Germany. Thomas Cook Group PLC in the United Kingdom announced today that it is filing for bankruptcy. In Germany the Thomas Cook subsidiary, Thomas Cook GmbH, has announced on its website that all vacations with departure dates for the 23rd and 24th of September will be cancelled and that it , along with Thomas Cook Touristik GmbH, Bucher Reisen & Öger Tours GmbH, might also have to file for bankruptcy. (Photo by Sean Gallup/Getty Images)

Hays Travel paid just £6m for Thomas Cook’s 555 high street stores after the firm’s collapse.

Hays bought the stores from the government’s Insolvency Service earlier this month, while also offering jobs to 2,000 former Thomas Cook employees.

Read more Hays Travel buys 555 Thomas Cook stores

Dean Beale, from the Insolvency Service, told MPs this morning that the Hays offer “was the best deal on the table”.

“The assessment of the Official Reciever was that this was a good deal,” he said.

Hays re-opened the former Thomas Cook stores under Hays’ branding shortly after the purchase, adding to its 190 bricks and mortar stores.

In a joint statement, John and Irene Hays, managing director and chair of Hays Travel, said: “Thomas Cook was a much-loved brand employing talented people. We look forward to working with many of them.

“Our staff were devastated to hear about Thomas Cook and we all immediately felt we wanted to help.”

This morning’s revelation came as former Thomas Cook bosses Manny Fontenla-Novoa and Harriet Green took questions from MPs on the Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy Committee.

Conservative MP Stephen Kerr claimed that the failed travel company were using its suppliers “as a bank”, leading to large debts.

Fontenla-Novoa, who was chief executive from 2003 to 2011, responded by saying Thomas Cook had done nothing outside of regular practice.

Kerr also attacked Fontenla-Novoa over the company’s strategy of using high street stores to sell travel packages in the face of growing internet competition.

Fontenla-Novoa said he “could not accept” that decisions he made while in charge led to the company’s future collapse.

“I believe there was growth in the [high street travel] market,” he said.

He also shifted blame onto Peter Fankhauser – chief executive when the travel company collapsed.

Read more: MPs slam inconceivable judgement of Thomas Cook auditors

Fontenla-Novoa said Fankhauser should have sold assets sooner to avoid becoming insolvent.

Green, who was chief executive from 2012 to 2014, said she laid plans to move the company online to try to chip away at the firm’s “wall of debt”.