It wasn’t an imagined nightmare: Rolls-Royce really was flat on its back in 2020 during the early stage of the Covid pandemic. Cash was flowing out of the engine-maker at an annual rate of £4bn as the commercial airline industry, like the rest of us, went into lockdown.
Management was modelling a “severe but plausible downside scenario” in which things could get even worse. The finance director skipped off to Ocado, which, at the time, had a stock market value three times that of Rolls. An emergency rights issue to raise £2bn at the miserable price of 32p a share was eventually launched that autumn, with the government playing a supporting role as guarantor of £3bn of the company’s debt.
