A few days after the tragic accident that saw a ship from the Costa Cruises fleet, the Concordia, sink near the island of Giglio, the time has already come for the first estimates of the economic damage that the company will have to face.
Just when the search operations for missing passengers – sixteen at the moment – are still underway and the emergency, especially the environmental one, has not yet ended, Carnival, the US company that owns Costa Cruises, evaluates an impact of at least $90 million on current year results, plus the ship being unusable for all of 2012 and beyond.
The US group also talks about an insurance coverage for damages sustained of around 30 million dollars, against a total value of the vessel of approximately 450 million.
The Concordia owns one more insurance coverage for passengers and crew up to a maximum of 3 billion dollars. Beyond all the data and assessments provided so far, no one is currently able to predict what the intangible damages will be – especially those concerning the image – that Costa will have to face.
Meanwhile, Carnival Group stocks plunge 23% on the London Stock Exchange and according to some analysts, the loss could amount to around 10% of the group's annual profits, equal to 1,91 billion dollars in 2011.
