Air New Zealand to axe flights from Kāpiti Coast airport
Apr 23, 2018 17:47:26 GMT 12
Dave Homewood, Bruce, and 5 more like this
Post by Peter Lewis on Apr 23, 2018 17:47:26 GMT 12
Cut to the facts, chaps.
Air New Zealand as it exists today is a privately-owned company that is listed on the NZ Stock Exchange.
(Any forms of ownership prior to this is irrelevant to its actions today).
As such, like all listed companies, it has a mixture of shareholder owners - some private individuals, some corporate, some investment trusts and pension funds, and (in this particular case) some shares in Government hands.
If you are in Kiwisaver you are probably (at one step removed) a part owner of this company.
Like all companies that operate in the non-Government sphere of the economy, when you strip away all the window-dressing and PR, it exists to make money for its shareholder owners and for no other reason.
It does not exist to help the poor.
It does not exist to take people off the unemployment roles.
It does not exist to redistribute money from one area of the country to another.
It does not exist to run unprofitable services for the good of the country or any particular area of it.
Like any profit-motivated business, if one sector of its business does not make money then either they change things so it does or if not they kill that sector. Business does not take prisoners.
The Board of Directors run the company. They hire the CEO.
The CEO's job is for the company to make as much money as possible. Simply that.
This is not a shameful thing. It is the mainspring of the economy.
If you appoint the CEO and say "Make money. That's your job" then you cannot also micromanage and say "But you must also produce this loss-making product or run that loss-making service".
It so happens the the Government (aka The Taxpayer) is a shareholder in this company, but that particular shareholder has no more rights than me if I care to buy a few hundred shares in my own name (I haven't). No shareholder can order a publicly listed company around. They don't have that power.
So Air New Zealand - like The Warehouse, Bunnings or Briscoes - is free to open or drop parts of it business as it chooses, and apart from the legally required accounting disclosures needed by the Stock Exchange, it is under no obligation to tell anyone the financial reasons behind that decision.
It's not our business and we the public have no right to horn in.
If you were a plumber, you'd hate it if you were required to accept certain customers no matter how you disliked them and your neighbours could sit down and sift through you accounts whenever they liked.
The Government can - and sometimes does - decide that certain sectors of the country or the economy need something that the sector cannot offer unaided. So either it sets up to provide that to them (at a taxpayer-subsidised loss) or pays a private-sector operator some funds to do so.
One example is primary and secondary schools - most parents could not afford to pay to educate their children in the basics of knowledge but our society has decided that we all benefit if children learn these things even if schools lose money, so part of the taxes we pay goes to schools. Everybody knows this what happens, but even so some schools eventually become superfluous and are closed down (usually among much protest).
So if some entity/Council/Govt decided that an air service to/from Paraparaumu was A Good Thing, then they are fully entitled to offer to pay ANZ or some other operator a subsidy to operate on that route. Of course, even then ANZ would be quite entitled not to accept that offer. Its a free country.
So please, do not endlessly hash out what ANZ should/should not do. It is pointless.
(Yes, I was strongly opposed to the taxpayer bailed out ANZ back when they had their Ansett troubles. I believed they should have had to fully suffer the consequences of their actions. However, that is now all in the past and what we have now is what we need to deal with).
Go ahead on this thread and be constructive.
However - big stick here - any ANZ more bashing will be deleted.
Air New Zealand as it exists today is a privately-owned company that is listed on the NZ Stock Exchange.
(Any forms of ownership prior to this is irrelevant to its actions today).
As such, like all listed companies, it has a mixture of shareholder owners - some private individuals, some corporate, some investment trusts and pension funds, and (in this particular case) some shares in Government hands.
If you are in Kiwisaver you are probably (at one step removed) a part owner of this company.
Like all companies that operate in the non-Government sphere of the economy, when you strip away all the window-dressing and PR, it exists to make money for its shareholder owners and for no other reason.
It does not exist to help the poor.
It does not exist to take people off the unemployment roles.
It does not exist to redistribute money from one area of the country to another.
It does not exist to run unprofitable services for the good of the country or any particular area of it.
Like any profit-motivated business, if one sector of its business does not make money then either they change things so it does or if not they kill that sector. Business does not take prisoners.
The Board of Directors run the company. They hire the CEO.
The CEO's job is for the company to make as much money as possible. Simply that.
This is not a shameful thing. It is the mainspring of the economy.
If you appoint the CEO and say "Make money. That's your job" then you cannot also micromanage and say "But you must also produce this loss-making product or run that loss-making service".
It so happens the the Government (aka The Taxpayer) is a shareholder in this company, but that particular shareholder has no more rights than me if I care to buy a few hundred shares in my own name (I haven't). No shareholder can order a publicly listed company around. They don't have that power.
So Air New Zealand - like The Warehouse, Bunnings or Briscoes - is free to open or drop parts of it business as it chooses, and apart from the legally required accounting disclosures needed by the Stock Exchange, it is under no obligation to tell anyone the financial reasons behind that decision.
It's not our business and we the public have no right to horn in.
If you were a plumber, you'd hate it if you were required to accept certain customers no matter how you disliked them and your neighbours could sit down and sift through you accounts whenever they liked.
The Government can - and sometimes does - decide that certain sectors of the country or the economy need something that the sector cannot offer unaided. So either it sets up to provide that to them (at a taxpayer-subsidised loss) or pays a private-sector operator some funds to do so.
One example is primary and secondary schools - most parents could not afford to pay to educate their children in the basics of knowledge but our society has decided that we all benefit if children learn these things even if schools lose money, so part of the taxes we pay goes to schools. Everybody knows this what happens, but even so some schools eventually become superfluous and are closed down (usually among much protest).
So if some entity/Council/Govt decided that an air service to/from Paraparaumu was A Good Thing, then they are fully entitled to offer to pay ANZ or some other operator a subsidy to operate on that route. Of course, even then ANZ would be quite entitled not to accept that offer. Its a free country.
So please, do not endlessly hash out what ANZ should/should not do. It is pointless.
(Yes, I was strongly opposed to the taxpayer bailed out ANZ back when they had their Ansett troubles. I believed they should have had to fully suffer the consequences of their actions. However, that is now all in the past and what we have now is what we need to deal with).
Go ahead on this thread and be constructive.
However - big stick here - any ANZ more bashing will be deleted.