Charting an Icarian Flightpath: The Implications of the Qantas Deal Collapse

The failed bid for control of Qantas reveals a multitude of weak points in the governance of management buyouts. The paper situates the Qantas collapse within the context of an increasingly acrimonious global debate over the utility of private equity financing. Regulators in the United States, Australia and the United Kingdom have expressed concern that unrestricted expansion increases the risk of market manipulation and macro-economic instability. The paper evaluates whether such concerns are justified by investigating the impact of private equity across a number of critical pressure points within the corporation and between it and those providing the intermediating services required to remain in or exit the public market.