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DERMOT MURNAGHAN: Now then, about 18 months ago the travel company, Thomas Cook, was more or less on its last legs then along came Harriet Green. She took the top job at the company and in less than a year seems to have managed to increase the share price tenfold. Now she says Thomas Cook is out of the danger zone so how did she do it? Well let’s ask her. The Chief Executive joins me now, a very good morning to you Harriet Green. It’s been done with a lot of pain hasn’t it, in all honesty? You’ve really had to wield the axe in places and restructure things.

HARRIET GREEN: Yes, I think the company was a basically good company and a phenomenally good brand, 23 million customers, but it had not a good balance sheet so good company, not a good balance sheet and you’re right, we had to look at how we turned it around, which is usually costs and cash and then we looked at a major transformation, what was the strategy because you can’t just do costs and cash, you need profitable growth. Then last week the final piece of that was to refinance the organisation and to move the debt out and reduce it.

DM: So when you went in there, the fundamentals, which are all important about a business, that must have been what you looked at, the brand super strong, the customers were still coming through the doors or through the internet portals or wherever it is, we’ll talk about that in a minute.

HG: Absolutely. I don't think it’s easy to kill a great brand, it’s 147 years old, as I say 23 million customers, strong margins and devoted employees who love to make people’s dreams come true and create their vacations. So you had those good things and this balance sheet that was not in good shape but before we could address the balance sheet issues we had to get the business really performing.

DM: But it’s one of the problems, one of the fundamental problems, that Thomas Cook didn’t seem to have moved with the times. You’ve got too many travel agencies and in actual fact they just took on some from the Co-op as well haven’t they?

HG: I think the major issue was lots of acquisitions made and not sort of integrating, not bringing the business into a sort of cohesive offering for our customers and so the reason why we then looked at reshaping the organisation was really to compensate for a history of making the company big – it’s a large organisation, nine and a half billion in revenues, but you’re right, it had not evolved and developed and integrated those great companies that they’d bought.

DM: So what’s for the future? You’ve still got a large debt overhang, how are you going to deal with that, how are you going to raise some more cash?

HG: Well I think the key thing is that we’ve pushed the debt out and we’ve reduced it. We’ve got a lot to do but we believe with this strategy for profitable growth, giving more great products to our customers, winter sun, city breaks, really developing the offering which will generate more cash, which is what we’re doing, and be able to trade our way well out of this.

DM: Let me ask you, because we are about to discuss it more, about the issue of corporate taxation. A company of your position wants to minimise its tax bill, every penny you can keep is a penny that can go and attack that debt and grow the business. It’s sensible, corporate tax planning, isn’t it, for you to pay the tax in the country where you will pay the lowest rate?

HG: Well I think of all the things that Thomas Cook has to worry about, we have had a number of losses so we are in the position where we have tax losses to carry forward so we have many other issues to deal with but that’s not one of them.

DM: But when you look at companies like Google and Amazon, who quite clearly are exploiting the rules, are using the rules to minimise their tax, what do you think as a pretty [strongly] sized company?

HG: I was very interested this morning to see more people coming out of the woodwork and talking about how that makes them feel. I think there’s an angle to this which is very important around employees, about how they feel about a company and good corporate governance, good tax policies, you know, our people, they want to know we are doing the right things in the right way at the right time and so that people angle, that employee angle, hasn’t come up as much as I would have expected and I suspect that’s why you have more individuals saying, hang on a minute, I don't know if you know this but I’m going to tell you what I’ve seen and so I think that’s important.

DM: An interesting take on that and very interesting hearing about your business. Good luck with the turnaround. Harriet Green there from Thomas Cook, very good to see you there.

HG: Thank you.