It’s been reported by several local and international news entities that Egyptian businessman Samih Sawiris’s Raiffeisen Touristik (RTK) Group recently acquired the German subsidiary of Thomas Cook Tourism Company. But does the business tycoon and billionaire really own the world’s oldest travel company now? 

Thomas Cook Germany recently declared bankruptcy after the collapse of the UK parent company. Discussions about the possibility of the sale or acquisition of the firm have been ongoing ever since.

Last Saturday evening, Sawiris made a phone call to Amr Adib’s El Hekaya program on MBC Masr. He clarified that he first bought a much bigger part of the tourism company five years ago and nobody even cared about the news back then. Today, everyone seems to be interested; he said that even the BBC called him for an interview about this news.

“I’ve been laughing for the past three days at the amount of exaggeration around this deal,” Sawiris said in a sarcastic tone. “The truth is that five years ago, we bought a part of Thomas Cook that’s five times bigger than the one I bought this time,” he added.

The billionaire also made it clear that he is not responsible for Thomas Cook Germany at all. In fact, he only has its distribution rights. In other words, Thomas Cook owned smaller companies in charge of distributing tourism travels, covering things like flight tickets and hotel bookings. After the bankruptcy, and having already acquired some of these, Sawiris bought the remaining companies, which amounted to 100, to save employees from being laid off.

The businessman looked at this acquisition differently. Doing these small companies a good deed, saving them from liquidation and bankruptcy, could do him also huge favour when he asks them to send tourists to Egypt. “100 companies in Germany is still a big number,” he justified his point of view. Sawiris also added that Thomas Cook is in huge debt to hotel owners, including Egyptian ones. 

It’s funny how media outlets can make a big deal out of something that could be, in fact, insignificant. Sawiris himself laughed at the news, saying that the size of RTK (that owns around 1,200 similar small firms) in comparison to this acquisition is nothing.