Quote:
Originally Posted by Alan Fry
Well if I was running BA I would buy Easyjet and let them be, after all flying low cost or not, BA will get the profit
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That's why you're not running BA, or any other large business. You are quick to offer an opinion but if your prodigious post rate has proved anything, it's that you largely comment from your position in orbit around some planet other than this one.
Publicly-traded companies like BA cannot just buy up other companies in order to 'get the profit'. Buying another company on that scale is a vastly complex and expensive business. It costs a lot of money to do it - money that belongs to BA shareholders who could, if they wished, simply take out of BA by selling their BA shares and then invest in Easyjet instead. That would be a rather more efficient use of capital.
A PLC's remit is to enhance shareholder value, not destroy it, or even hold it static (which in a market economy is the same as destroying it). BA would have to show how buying Easyjet would *improve* return on capital employed. It won't try to buy that company because it's unlikely it old show any such thing.
Oh, and the competition commission would probably have something to say about it too.