From FTI to FTI. FTI Touristik has entrusted FTI Consulting with the task of putting an end to the accommodation business of its subsidiary Meeting Point, which is also the one that Labranda Hotels is dependent on, for example. The concern of the hotel owners, workers and suppliers in the Canary Islands is at its highest as everything is still up in the air and perhaps the company is closer to bankruptcy than to refloating it through third-party debt relief, a speciality of FTI Consulting at Naviera Armas, where it represents the interests of the creditor banks of the parent company of Trasmediterránea.
FTI Consulting, formerly Forensics Technologies International, is a Washington-based business consulting firm founded in 1982 specializing in corporate finance and restructuring, forensic and litigation consulting. The firm was involved in the Lehman Brothers and General Motors bankruptcies, the Bernard Madoff fraud investigation, the US baseball steroids investigation, and the US Department of Justice investigation.
The German bankruptcy administrator has removed the top management of MP Hotels. Venancio Llorente, who had been CEO of Meeting Point for a few months, has left his post following a decision by the German central court. In his place comes FTI Consulting with a script more suited to a Fauda series or a horror film.
This move is not trivial. MP's annual accounts have not yet been published in the commercial register and many are wondering if this is due to not having to file for bankruptcy once the results are out. Publishing them could also scare off potential buyers and thus not collect and bring fresh money to Germany to pay the German government's debt with the money collected in the Canary Islands. In Germany there is a debt of 800 million euros and the Canary Islands business is the only solid thing the firm has at the expense of suppliers and island labour.
The bankruptcy of FTI Touristik has shaken both the German tourism sector and the south of Gran Canaria. What will happen to FTI's clients and employees? What are the plans of the bankruptcy administrator? And how are the other tour operators doing? In colonial logic, FTI Touristik has not sent any logical message to the public in the south of the island to reassure, above all, the owners of properties rented to Meeting Point.
