Originally Posted by
Andy
Baseball, the key players that turned around Continental are Brenneman and Bonderman. Neither are at Delta. Brenneman's Chairman of CCMP Capital. Bonderman's still a partner at TPG Capital. Bethune's performance at Aloha proves he's not the talent.
And let's not forget that United and Delta are tremendously more complicated beasts than Continental ever was.
As far as diversifying their bets, that's not true of Altimeter Capital. They've now got ~40% of their investments in United Airlines. Sure there's the other 60% mixed among other companies, but Brad Gerstner's making a huge bet on United. Here's a post where I've documented PAR and Altimeter's position in United:
If you dig through Altimeter's quarterly filings, you'll see the size each holding represents within each fund.
13F Manager Holdings - Altimeter Capital Management, LLC
Brad Gerstner of Altimeter likes to make outsized bets with OPM (Other Peoples' Money). If his hedge fund blows up, he can close its doors and start over. If the bets pay off, he collects outsized management fees.
Bondermen and Brenneman were definitely players but Bethune definitely played a major role. Brenneman left after only a couple of years. The biggest thing both Bonderman, Bethune and to a lesser degree Brenneman did was to bring in talented people and let them run their side of things. Larry Kellner was a great finance guy, and still is. He was a great pick for that position and an ok CEO. Smicek while a terrible CEO, was a great lawyer. Bethune and Bondermen were able to assemble a very talented MGT. team and then let them excell in their field. That was really Continentals strength, not one or 2 stars. As Jeff found out, that does not work so well.
As far as the new Delta and United being
much more complicated, I just don't see it.