Thomas Cook Group
defunct British global travel company
Thomas Cook Group plc was a global travel group, headquartered in the United Kingdom and listed on the London Stock Exchange from its formation on 19 June 2007 by the merger of Thomas Cook AG — successor to Thomas Cook & Son — and MyTravel Group until 23 September 2019, when it went into compulsory liquidation. The group operated as a tour operator and airline, and also operated travel agencies in Europe. At the time of the group's collapse, approximately 21,000 worldwide employees were left without jobs (including 9,000 UK staff) and 600,000 customers (150,000 from the UK) were left abroad, triggering the UK's largest peacetime repatriation.
After the collapse, segments of the company were purchased by others, including the travel stores in the UK, the airlines, the Thomas Cook name and logo, the hotel brands and the tour operators. Thomas Cook India has been an entirely separate entity since August 2012, when it was acquired by Fairfax Financial and thus was not affected. In September 2020, Fosun International launched Thomas Cook Holidays as the successor to the company, hiring some former Thomas Cook Group staff in the process.
History
Formation
In February 2007, it was announced that Thomas Cook AG and MyTravel Group plc were to merge. The companies announced they expected to make savings of over £75 million a year, following the integration of the two businesses. Under the terms of the merger, the owners of Thomas Cook AG, KarstadtQuelle (later Arcandor), owned 52% of the new group. The shareholders of MyTravel Group owned the remaining 48% share.
“Thomas Cook Group” enters the record as defunct British global travel company. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Thomas, Cook and Group can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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The record creator and administrative purpose are central evidence, because official documentation reflects both action and institutional priorities. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 23, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q2141800. VIAF identifies the subject as 154777682. The Library of Congress control number is n81042676. 4 of 6 selected statements include explicit references; 2 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2007, 2019, 2012 and 2020.
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This entry incorporates text from “Thomas Cook Group” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.