The fortunes of Thomas Cook have been suffering for some time now but there had been signs of recovery but these signs were short-lived and did not gain the momentum that was required to turn around this ailing company.Your task will be to take a closer look at this company and see if the ultimate demise could have been predicted.

Task One

Using the Annual Report and Accounts of Thomas Cook for the period 2015, 2016, 2017 and 2018, you are required to evaluate the performance of the company. The reports and accounts for these years are available at the following link:

https://www.thomascookgroup.com/investors/reports_presentations You are required to :

1. Evaluate the performance of Thomas Cook in the following areas, using ratio analysis:Profitability

• Liquidity/Solvency
• Working capital efficiency
• Long term financial structure
• Investors perspective

In addition you could also consider the performance of Thomas Cook in comparison with its peer group of competitors for example, other travel agents in the industry.

You should summarise your findings and make particular reference to the interests of the different stakeholders of the company.

When undertaking any calculations use the Total figures from the financial statements.

When completing Part (a) take the following into account:

1. 4 years of analysis would be worthwhile.
2. Benchmarking to one competitor
3. Make sure that you explain why the ratios are changing and what the implications or conclusions of this are and tying this to..(point 4 below)
4. Don't forget to comment on the views of specific stakeholders.
5. Contemplate your presentation. This work lends itself to the use of graphs,

charts, tables and so on.

Task Two Considering your response to Task One and any further reading, you are required to provide advice, accompanied by a rationale, as to what you think could have been done using appropriate ratios to support your answer, in order to save the company.

Task Three Your third task is to consider the business model that was employed by Thomas Cook. What was the philosophy and why do you think that it failed? Your arguments can also be supportive of some of the practices that they deployed if you think that they were worthy of merit but you must also consider the fundamental question of why the company did not survive. Where possible, utilise the academic literature to support your arguments please send screenshorts of answer due to plagiarism issue,atleast 2500 words

Thomas Cook share price collapse Earnings per share 2010 +20.4p 2018 -0.3p Profit declines (partly due to Brexit uncertainty), share price plummets 1.5 billion net loss in H1 2019 Oct Nov Dec Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Sep 2018 Jan 2019 Aug Sep Source: Yahoo Finance Thomas Cook share price collapse Earnings per share 2010 +20.4p 2018 -0.3p Profit declines (partly due to Brexit uncertainty), share price plummets 1.5 billion net loss in H1 2019 Oct Nov Dec Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Sep 2018 Jan 2019 Aug Sep Source: Yahoo Finance