THOMAS Cook collapsed with total liabilities of £9bn, it emerged yesterday, making the immediate financial toll of the company going bust even greater than that of Carillion's collapse in early 2018.

In a report on the failure released yesterday, it emerged that the travel operator owed £585m to customers and £45m to employees when it hit the wall.

Meanwhile, £5.7bn was owed to other group companies, and £1.7bn was owed to banks and other lenders, according to the Insolvency Service.

"The position regarding intercompany trading, assets and liabilities is still to be fully determined," senior official receiver and liquidator David Chapman said.

The report only refers to 26 Thomas Cook Group companies which were wound up on 23 September.

A further 27 UK companies in the group were wound up on 8 November. The Official Receiver will report separately about them "in due course". Thomas Cook's eye-watering liabilities come to even more than those of outsourcer Carillion, which collapsed in early 2018 owing £7bn in total.

The notice to creditors showed that only between £176m and £244m has been recouped through selling off Thomas Cook assets such as retail outlets, aircraft landing slots, intellectual property rights, subsidiary and joint venture businesses and the collection of currency and cash from agency branches.

The report showed that directors put the group's financial deterioration down to certain factors, including customer uncertainty caused by Brexit, hot UK weather in the summer of 2018 and a reduction in demand across the firm's geographical trading areas.

The report also cited increased challenges from online competitors in directors' listed reasons for the collapse.

(c) 2019 City A.M., source Newspaper