The hematophagous ectoparasites (they feed on blood) of North American banking in Germany have decided to play the role of vectors of infectious diseases in the financial and industrial spheres in the Canary Islands subsidiary of FTI, Meeting Point, which is a partner in Playa del Inglés and Las Palmas by Acosta Matos, for example. The North American investment bank Stifel in Germany has been commissioned by FTI's insolvency administrator to sell the business while the bankruptcy executives take out the tweezers and use a scalpel to extract maximum liquidity from its Canary Islands subsidiary. Also to look for a buyer for assets with squatters such as the Stella Canaris project in Fuerteventura. One has to take the money out of the Canary Islands even if it is in the form of a convolute as was already done in Barcelona in its time with SEAT.
The veterinarians in charge of preparing the sale of the bled cow, what is left of the goodwill because almost everything is rented, are Venancio Lorente and the financial manager, Namita Ahuja, people from the house who come from the already closed business of the receptive unit. , and they have an order from the bankruptcy administrator in Munich that to earn their salary they have to seduce suppliers with cuts and hurry up so as not to have to give too many explanations. The accounting of the Canarian group is to pay German debts with the political power. Berlin will now take charge of Madrid, a creditor of European funds 'made in Germany', and will articulate a line as was done with Thomas Cook when the silent FEHT or Cecapyme (importers) protest, that is, when everything is lost.
The Canarian business authorities remain silent but among suppliers and property owners there is a lot of nervousness in view of the debts that the subsidiary in Greece has tried to impose on a meat supplier with barely 210.000 euros. "How have they been able to try to deceive a butcher, a sector as violent as quality food in hotels?" a builder asked this summer in the Rías Bajas of Las Palmas at a lunch with journalists from the financial sector. . The Meeting Point box is empty in perpetuity because the blood is sent to the German financial ticks that, in the Canary Islands, have always had the conception of being an extractive colony where their business and regulatory authorities have little technical preparation to know how to extirpate skin this type of parasites and avoid chain bankruptcies from small supply providers to complexes.
The Amblyomma tick is most frequently found on livestock. Milk production decreases. Precisely, the little milk cow called Meeting Point is about to dry up and all this is not new. In 1995, FTI Touristik emerged. In 2000 Airtours bought FTI from a well-known manager in the Canary Islands: Dietmar Gunz, who left the company. It was a disaster for Canarian tourism because cuts had to be made so that the cow could continue producing milk, that is, income at a time when supply was in an expansion phase due to the arrival of the euro.
The guarantees paid to hoteliers as well as the deposits mixed with a demand below expectations ended up propping up the disaster. This is how in 2003 Dietmar Gunz bought back the company for one euro and started FTI Group. Starting again from scratch and the vocabulary of Canarian businessmen goes from being industrial to financial: balance plus debts, write-offs, forgiveness and start over. In the Canary Islands they let themselves be carried away by the emotional factor, as the Germans now expect in 2024, to forgive debts.
In 2020, the investor Sawiris, one of the richest families in Egypt, takes over 75,1% of FTI Group and Dietmar Gunz exits the operating business. A new macro structure is created in Germany of managers willing to relaunch the company under the project called Phoenix that never takes off like such a phoenix.
In 2024, a preliminary agreement is reached with a consortium led by Certares that does not come to fruition in a strange operation to say the least. The company declares insolvency in Germany because the shareholders decide not to contribute more capital and the company is left with debts of 850 million euros that include aid from the German Government and the Spanish Administration. FTI owes the state economic stabilization fund (FSM) a whopping 600 million to which must be added a loan to Unicredit guaranteed by the German Government and the State of Bavaria for an amount of 250 million euros. Therefore, 850 million euros of debt in Germany alone.
The hotel subsidiary in the Canary Islands Meeting Point Hotelmanagement continues with its operations and apparent normality but has already put its business up for sale through Stifel. The bankruptcy administrator for FTI in Germany, Axel Bierbach, from the MHBK office in Munich, has asked to milk the Canarian cow and ignore the fact that it is full of ticks. In the case of the Canary Islands, all the hotels are for rent, there is only one interesting asset left, the controversial Stella Canaris in Fuerteventura, where there is general fear that the machinery will be put into operation to save money and pay late and poorly because someone could have the temptation for what is collected to start the work again.
