Comment: Thomas Cook's Peter Fankhauser ran right out of luck and now the business will disappear from the stock market

PETER Fankhauser wouldn’t have stood a chance with Napoleon. The French dictator demanded lucky generals, not good ones.

And luck for the Thomas Cook chief has been in short supply. Too laden with debt to invest properly in a new generation of hotels, and in a structural downturn for package tours, he’d been running out of road for a long time.

This year it became clear the only way of rescuing his shareholders was to sell Cook’s airline to pay down some of its £1.6 billion debt and hope his Chinese partner and biggest shareholder, Fosun, would then buy the rest of the business. His advisers priced the airline at £700 million.

But the timing was awful. Just as the sale started, airline after airline issued profit warnings . Bids came in way lower than predicted, meaning the sale would barely make a dent on its horrendous debt.

Lenders and hoteliers became increasingly worried about Cook’s viability. It was only a matter of time before customers smelt the fear and began booking elsewhere.

Fankhauser flew out to China to negotiate with Fosun, perhaps hoping it would buy the business. But £1.6 billion was too much debt even for the deep-pocketed Chinese. The result is what we see today . A horrible outcome for shareholders, but some stability for suppliers and customers.

If it goes ahead, Fosun will be the majority owner of the tour operator and eventually buy it outright, the banks will own most of the airline and almost certainly sell it. Cooks will disappear from the stock market.

And Fankhauser? He’ll probably stay for now – Fosun and the banks know he’s the only one who understands the business. But eventually, he’ll quit. A good operator, but an unlucky one.