Bankrupt British travel giant Thomas Cook was within days of running out of cash, according to a High Court witness statement made by its now former chief executive Peter Fankhauser.
Insolvency documents filed by the company showed that the group was facing demands of almost 500 million pounds ($618 million) from hotel partners and other creditors.
The papers shed more light on why the company collapsed and how Thomas Cook management battled to save the group including Thomas Cook airlines and retail shops.
The documents show the company was left with just 956,670 pounds in group cash reserves and 31.2 million in bank accounts when it went bust.
Fankhauser said in his statement that the "company will run out of cash by Oct 4, 2019, and probably earlier".
The British tour operator suffered from multiple setbacks including changing travel habits and the rise of online booking sites, according to a report by the Associated Press.
It was also hit by the sinking pound and unusually hot weather that encouraged fewer Northern Europeans to travel, it adds.
The court documents showed a balance sheet deficit of more than3 billion pounds, including 1.9 billion of debt, inter-company payables and amounts owed to third-party payment service providers, bonding providers and guarantees to the Civil Aviation Authority, or CAA.
In a last-ditch effort to save itself, the travel giant tried to sell a majority stake to its largest shareholder, the Chinese investment company Fosun International.
However, the 900 million pound rescue deal failed, while talks with creditors and British authorities also failed to materialize.
The Financial Times said the company received five offers for its airline, one for its tour operator, from Fosun, and one offer for its Nordic business. But all the bids were rejected, with the board deciding they were unlikely to realize sufficient value and would leave the group in a state that was "unlikely to be sustainable".
The documents also reveal that the Turkish Anex Tour Group, which already had an 8 percent equity stake, made a takeover offer in August. But talks between Anex and Fosun failed to lead to a deal.
The collapse of the 178-year-old company in the early hours of Monday left thousands of people stranded at holiday destinations around the world.
All Thomas Cook flights ceased on Monday morning, leaving passengers and crew dependent upon an airlift organized by the CAA – code-named "Operation Matterhorn".
The repatriation mission aims to get most of the 150,000 Thomas Cook customers abroad back to Britain on the day they were expecting.
The CAA said emergency flights brought nearly 15,000 people back to the United Kingdom on Monday, while around16,000 were expected to be rescued on Tuesday, and another 120,000 are expected to be returned over the next 12 days.
The British travel company was founded in 1841 by Thomas Cook and became a model of organized tourism. Having started with railway excursions the company acquired a lot of assets, such as hotels, resorts, as well as the airline. According to Reuters, the number of Thomas Cook's customers was as high as 19 million people a year.
