Tuesday 8 March 2011

The swap

In his interview to The Daily Telegraph last Saturday (‘Risk of the new banking crises’), Mervyn King the Governor of the Bank of England mentioned some of the root causes of banking crises that closely resemble the problems faced by the airline industry. This is how the airline version would look like if banking were swapped with airline references (in italic).

Airlines are urged to take a better, longer term view towards their customers and to stop focusing on the need to “simply maximise profits next week ‘

‘We allowed the big airlines and airports to build up which contained the seeds of their own destruction’

‘The “weight put on the importance and value of takeovers” was criticised and concerns rose that companies with good reputations have been “destroyed” in the search for short-term profits’

‘The concept of being too important to fail should have no place in a market economy’

Does airline industry need its King?