Men walk past a Thomas Cook banner at Dalaman Airport after Thomas Cook, the world’s oldest travel firm, collapsed stranding hundreds of thousands of holidaymakers around the globe and sparking the largest peacetime repatriation effort in British history, in Dalaman, Turkey, September 23, 2019. REUTERS/Umit Bektas
LONDON (Reuters) – A panel of bankers has ruled that some investors in Thomas Cook’s (TCG.L) credit derivatives worth as much as $2.7 billion are eligible for a payout following the world’s oldest tour operator’s collapse on Monday.
The Credit Derivatives Determinations Committees (DC) said in a statement posted on its website on Tuesday that its EMEA panel had determined at a meeting on Monday that a bankruptcy credit event had occurred.
That ruling by the DC, which is made up of representatives from big banks, means that most holders of Credit Default Swaps (CDS), instruments used to insure exposure to credit, will get paid for their bets against the company.
The weekly gross notional value for Thomas Cook’s CDS was $2.69 billion, according to the Depositary Trust & Clearing Corp (DTCC).
The ruling applies to credit derivative transactions with a scheduled termination date on or after Sept. 23 and doesn’t apply to transactions with a termination date of Sept. 20, the statement said.
The judgment comes after hundreds of thousands of holidaymakers were stranded on Monday by the demise of the company, sparking the largest peacetime repatriation effort in British history.
The liquidation marks the end of a British company that started in 1841 running local rail excursions and grew to pioneer the family package holiday.
Reporting by Josephine Mason and Karin Strohecker; Editing by Mark Potter