Mayday, mayday, the US airline's stock is taking a nosedive. Rumors about the US company's possible bankruptcy started spreading yesterday and caused its shares to drop nearly 40% by mid-day on Wall Street. According to CNBC, trading on the stock has been suspended seven times and the stock closed down 33%. It is the biggest lunge since the attack on the Twin Towers on September 11, 2001.
Today it is assumed that the group will shortly begin a phase of receivership. But the company has denied. Andy Backover, director of communications, said that the hypothesis of "a restructuring under the supervision of a court is certainly not our goal or our preferred choice" and that we need to improve the results. And there are no doubts about this, since the Group's debt is around 12 billion dollars (almost 9 euros). A frightening sum when compared with the 666 million of its market capitalization, which, until two days ago, amounted to 700 million.
The risk of the Group sinking also seems to scare workers: in the last two months over 200 pilots have asked for early retirement to protect their pension funds from a possible crash. However, the airline said it was renegotiating contracts with pilots and flight attendants to reduce costs of 800 million. American Airlines shares are down 75% year-to-date.
