Doug Parker Continues To Tout The Benefits of a USAir-AA Merger
I’ve never been the biggest Doug Parker fan. I think he says thing sometimes just to make headlines, and frankly I think he has something of an ego.
So, to see stories like this one keep popping up is a bit annoying. Doug says there is “tremendous support” in the financial markets for a USAirways/AA merger and that such a merger would be great for shareholders.
I’m not saying it’s impossible but I do question what makes this such a foregone conclusion. It’s not even certain that the unions can come to some agreement. AA’s unions see US as the savior now, but US still doesn’t have labor harmony 7 years after it’s last merger.
And, as an aside, kudos to Tom Horton (AMR CEO) for letting Doug take the headlines. AA has a lot of work ahead of it and they don’t need to be bogged down in Doug Parker’s lego world.
As View From the Wing notes, Doug Parker was rumored to have nixed a United merger years ago because he wouldn’t be the guy running the combined airline.
Like I said, I’m not ruling out that a merger could turn out to be the right thing. But, other than Doug Parker and some unions that haven’t been happy for a decade, I don’t hear anyone else saying why this is so positive.
A lot of the other people quoted as saying that a merger/takeover are desirable or inevitable are either with investment banks that stand to make a lot of money on the M&A aspects of such a deal, or manage funds that have been investing in LCC in recent months – part of why their share price is up almost 200% since AMR’s bankruptcy filing. I’ll be kind and say that there’s at least the appearance of a conflict of interest 😉
No doubt there are a lot of tertiary interests in seeing this merger happen, most of which have nothing to do with the customer. 🙂