Author Archives: Adam Jacobson

About Adam Jacobson

Adam Jacobson is a former associate editor of the Risk Management Monitor and Risk Management magazine.
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Travel Company Thomas Cook Collapses, Stranding Customers Worldwide

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The world’s oldest travel company, UK-based Thomas Cook—which operates hotels and resorts around the world as well as its own airlines—all but collapsed this week, cancelling all of the company’s bookings (including flights and holiday packages), and closing its retail locations. The shutdown left 600,000 customers stranded, and Reuters called the effort to get passengers home “the biggest ever peacetime repatriation,” with 64 flights bringing 14,700 back to the United Kingdom on Monday, and hundreds of thousands more are expected to be transported over the next two weeks. The collapse also leaves more than 20,000 employees out of work.

Thomas Cook was buried in debt, partially due to its reluctance to adapt quickly to online travel booking and worries about Brexit, and lenders stopped funding the company. The company had requested £900 million ($1.1 billion) from its creditors and the Chinese company Fosun, Thomas Cook’s largest shareholder, but the deal did not materialize. According to The Guardian, as the company slipped further into debt, payment card companies like American Express and Barclays also limited cash collections and payment services to mitigate harm from a collapse.

The UK government also denied Thomas Cook a last-minute $310 million bailout, partially because, as UK business secretary Andrea Leadsom said, “Thomas Cook is sitting on trying to service £1.7 billion [$2.1 billion] of debt, and it would have been a waste of taxpayers’ money to be throwing good money after bad.” Reportedly, the Turkish government and some Spanish hotel businesses offered to front £200 million ($247 million) to save the company if the UK government would guarantee the investment. But the UK government rejected the deal, saying that the amount would not have sustained the company for more than two weeks.

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Leadsom said that she also asked for an expedited investigation into the corporate collapse by the UK’s Insolvency Service—a branch of the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy that handles corporate liquidations and personal bankruptcy cases, including investigating companies’ bankruptcies for misconduct.  Others raised the issue of company higher-ups earning millions while the company sank, with Prime Minister Boris Johnson saying, “I have questions for one about whether it’s right that the directors, or whoever, the board, should pay themselves large sums when businesses can go down the tubes like that.” The UK’s Financial Reporting Council said that it may investigate Thomas Cook’s auditors, PwC and EY, in relation to the company’s collapse.

For stranded passengers, the UK government and other airlines are stepping in to ensure everyone can make it home. In 2017, when UK company Monarch Airlines went under, the government brought all passengers home, and it appears they will do the same in this case. Of the 600,000 stranded customers, 150,000 to 160,000 are British, and UK foreign secretary Dominic Raab told the BBC that the country will be arranging alternative flights for those travelers. Customers with tickets on Thomas Cook subsidiary airline Condor will be fine, as Condor will continue to function after a £380 million loan from the German government.

Others will be able to take seats on flights provided by a variety of airlines, including US-based provider Atlas Air, British Airways, Lufthansa, and possibly Malaysian Airlines, among others.

Regarding payment, things may get more complicated. According to the BBC, UK travelers who booked a package trip are covered by the Air Travel Organiser’s Licence (ATOL), an insurance program that will cover the cost of repatriating travelers.

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Those who just bought flights will reportedly have to appeal to their travel insurance or credit card companies for refunds. Hotels and resorts are also reportedly asking guests who booked through Thomas Cook to pay out of pocket for their stays, as the company’s payment is in question.

National Flood Insurance Program Set to Expire

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As a tropical storm battered parts of Texas with more than 40 inches of rain in 72 hours last week, Congress is debating whether to extend the National Flood Insurance Program, which expires on September 30. The NFIP is a government-run flood insurance plan that covers 5 million policies and is an alternative to the relatively shallow private flood insurance market. Since the passage of the National Flood Insurance Act of 1968, Congress has often waited until the last minute to reauthorized the program before its expiration and passed only short-term extensions (12 since 2017).

Last week, the U.S. House of Representatives passed a continuing resolution to keep the federal government funded through November 21 and prevent a government shutdown. This measure included an extension for the NFIP through the same date. But it is unclear whether the Senate will pass the resolution or allow a shutdown.

The House of Representatives Financial Services Committee unanimously passed a bill titled the National Flood Insurance Program Reauthorization Act of 2019 (H.R. 3167), which would reauthorize the NFIP for five years and provide funding for flood mapping and flood mitigation programs. It would also mandate a number of reforms, including allowing policyholders to get refunds if they cancel their policy before its expiration date, eliminating penalties if insureds leave the NFIP for the private market, and requiring the NFIP to increase premium rates each year.

On the Senate side, there is a bill of the same name that would also extend the NFIP for five years. The bills would also cap annual rate increases at 9% (as opposed to the current law, which allows increases by up to 25% annually), making the program more affordable, especially for low-income policyholders. Additionally, it includes provisions to protect homebuyers and renters by mandating flood risk and prior flood damage disclosures, and also funds flood mapping modernization and mitigation. As of this writing, the Senate has not voted on the measure.

Climate change has exacerbated annual flooding across the United States, making storms more violent, frequent and costly. In its June report on the flood outlook for 2019, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration noted that non-storm, high-tide flooding “is increasingly common due to years of relative sea level increases. It no longer takes a storm or a hurricane to cause flooding in many coastal areas.” And in May, NASA said that the United States had experienced record-setting precipitation, characterizing it as the “soggiest 12 months in 124 years of modern record-keeping.”

They also mean millions more in property damage, which in turn means more people getting payouts from the NFIP. In fact, the series of hurricanes that hit the United States in 2017 and 2018 also hit the NFIP hard—the program lost billions of dollars in payouts, leading the government to pass a disaster relief bill that helped the NFIP pay the claims. The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), which runs the NFIP, aims to double the number of people who have flood insurance by 2023, but according to E&E News analysis, coverage in the United States has declined by 31% since 2011, leaving many without protection if they are hit with flooding.

In 2012, Congress passed a law allowing federal agencies to begin accepting private flood policies, but the market has been sluggish to fill the gaps. Some are stepping in—indeed, the American Association of Insurance Services (AAIS) today announced a partnership with Munich Reinsurance America, Inc. (Munch Re) to provide flood insurance aimed at homeowners outside major flood zones. But with few other private insurance companies offering flood policies, if the NFIP is not reauthorized, this could leave more than half-a-million people across the country without coverage.

Trade Dispute Worries US Companies in China

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As the Trump administration wages an economic battle with China in the form of reciprocating tariffs and other economic measures, it may not be a great time to be an American company operating in China. The US-China Business Council (USCBC), an organization made up of 200 U.

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S. companies that do business with China, released its annual member survey, finding the trade dispute—and the ongoing political tensions underlying it—are a huge concern for these companies and may be adding to worries about doing business in China.

Since the Trump administration declared a tariff on billions of dollars of Chinese exports in June 2018, the United States and China have traded retaliatory economic measures.

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Negotiators from the countries are preparing to meet in October, hoping to break a deadlock, even as each side moves to put pressure on the other’s economy.

Last month, President Trump announced increased tariff rates on Chinese imports, and tweeted that American companies were “hereby ordered to immediately start looking for an alternative to China, including bringing your companies HOME and making your products in the USA.” Some U.S. business groups condemned the moves and the president’s rhetoric, including the National Retail Federation. “It’s impossible for businesses to plan for the future in this type of environment,” said David French, the federation’s senior vice president of government affairs. These moves are an outgrowth of continued tensions, both economic and political, between the two countries.

It is no wonder then, that between 2018 and 2019, the percentage of USCBC members who said that their company’s business had been affected by US-China “trade tensions” increased from 73% to 81%. Of the reasons companies reduced or stopped planning investment in China in the past year, 60% of respondents cited “increased costs of uncertainties from US-China tensions.”

Among the real-world results of the trade dispute, USCBC members reported that the biggest impact was “lost sales due to tariffs implemented by China” (49%) and “shifts in suppliers or sourcing due to uncertainty of continued supply” (43%). The majority of the other concerns have to do with uncertainty or stigma attached to U.S. companies in China. Additionally, 26% of respondents projected that their current year revenue from China would decrease, compared to 9% in 2018.

The USCBC reported that “respondent optimism about China market prospects five years from now is at a historic low,” with the country’s stringent regulatory environment posing the largest driver of long-term doubt for U.S. companies. Indeed, the survey showed that, for 2019, 14% had a pessimistic or somewhat pessimistic five-year outlook, while 21% were neutral, an increase of 5% for both since 2018. However, the trade disputes are a major driver of short-term pessimism.

Also, when asked about cyber-related issues with doing business in China, 64% of respondents reported that “U.S.-China political tensions” were their biggest worry. And with good cause: According to cybersecurity firm Crowdstrike’s 2019 Global Threat Report, in the past year, the firm “observed an increasing operational tempo from China-based adversaries, which is only likely to accelerate as Sino-U.S. relations continue to worsen.”

And the impact reaches far broader than just companies that do business in China, like the members of the USCBC. As reported in the Risk Management article “The Business Impact of Trump Tariffs,” because many companies have complex, interconnected international supply chains, the trade dispute has a much broader effect on a wider array of businesses and industries. For example, a tariff on Chinese solar panels does not just hurt Chinese solar panel companies, it hurts U.S. manufacturers that supply parts for those panels, and U.S. companies that rely on components from Chinese manufacturers are affected as well.

Johnson & Johnson to Pay $572 Million in Opioid Crisis Lawsuit

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This week, a judge in Oklahoma ordered pharmaceutical company Johnson & Johnson to pay $572 million for its role in the opioid crisis that has ravaged the country and killed more than 6,000 people in Oklahoma alone. The ruling is the first to hold a drug manufacturer responsible for the crisis, which was fueled by companies flooding the market with addictive painkillers and pushing doctors to overprescribe the drugs. The amount is far less than the $17.5 billion that the state’s attorney general sought, and the company says it plans to appeal the ruling.

Cleveland County District Judge Thad Balkman ruled that the state met its burden in arguing that the company created a “temporary public nuisance” by using “misleading marketing and promotion of opioids,” and added in his ruling that “those actions annoyed, injured or endangered the comfort, repose, health or safety of Oklahomans.”

Judge Balkman cited Johnson & Johnson’s deceptive and aggressive marketing of painkillers to doctors, and the company’s practice of discouraging its sales representatives from discussing addiction or other negative consequences of using the drugs, while encouraging their prescription for both moderate and severe pain. The company also sought to convince doctors that they were under-prescribing pain medications and that having patients ask for higher doses was not a sign of addiction, just indicative of needing more to address their pain.

Johnson & Johnson markets the painkillers Duragesic (fentanyl) and Nucynta, both of which contain opioids. The company has also long manufactured the raw ingredients for other companies’ opioid-based painkillers, having bought a company in Tasmania in the 1980s that grows poppies and processed opium. According to the New York Times, by the height of the opioid epidemic, the company had become “the leading supplier for the ingredients in painkillers in the United States,” having developed a specific strain of poppy that provided the basis for Purdue’s Oxycontin, as well as manufacturing and supplying ingredients for “a range of other drugs, including hydrocodone, morphine, codeine and buprenorphine.”

Michael Ullmann, Johnson & Johnson’s general counsel, released a statement calling the judgement “a misapplication of public nuisance law that has already been rejected by judges in other states.” He also noted, “The unprecedented award for the state’s ‘abatement plan’ has sweeping ramifications for many industries and bears no relation to the company’s medicine or conduct.”

The amount decided for damages may actually seem low—$572 million will reportedly only fund a single year of Oklahoma’s opioid recovery plan, which the state estimates will cost $12.7 billion to $17.5 billion over 20 to 30 years. The company’s stock even rose this week, which some attribute to relief over the relatively low damages.

However, many are cheering the Oklahoma ruling as other lawsuits near their court dates. This includes a massive federal lawsuit scheduled for October in Cleveland, Ohio, that brings together more than 2,000 separate cases. Judge Balkman’s decision that the company’s activities constituted a public nuisance opens the door for similar rulings in other state cases, and an additional legal avenue for holding companies responsible for their part in the epidemic.

Also this week, Oxycontin manufacturer Purdue Pharma pledged to pay $10 billion to $12 billion to settle thousands opioid-related claims, according to NBC News. Purdue had been part of the Oklahoma suit, but to avoid the lawsuit, Purdue agreed in March to pay a $270 million settlement to establish an addiction treatment and research center at Oklahoma State University, and provide continued funding over five years. Purdue’s owners the Sackler family also agreed to pay $75 million to the center for five years. In May, Israel-based Teva Pharmaceuticals also settled with Oklahoma for $85 million, which will further fund the state’s effort to combat opioid addiction.