Monday, April 02, 2007
Sabre - no rumours to monger over
Sabre is now private...a public company no more. I am a little disappointed. With the little hiccup last week over the announcement of a delay in the approval meeting I had hoped for a list minute twist to give me something juicy to blog about - but atlas. The deal is done and the TSG ticker is no more (for now).
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On assuming control of the Sabre Business, TPG – Texas Pacific Group - has great pleasure in announcing the retirement of the SABRE name in favor of a more modern and appropriate branding. NEW COMPANY NAME FABLE. Formally the new company will be known as FABLE Holdings LLC.
Asked why the sudden change in name after over 20 years – commenting - a spokesperson close to the company said
“ We were really tired of the acronym that comprises SABRE, IE SEMI-AUTOMATED BUSINESS RESEARCH ENVIRONMENT. You can only imagine the jokes have made over the years about our brand.”
“ So we just had to come up with a new brand name. The embarrassment of having <> was pretty galling for a high tech IT based company such as us, but worse to be regarded as a <> when we had been an operational company for so long just didn’t make sense – so we had to find something more appropriate. Besides – it wasn’t even our own brand name – it was originally coined by IBM of all people.”
“ We are really proud of the new name. We paid a sizeable fee to the leading eBusiness Global Travel Consulting firm (we cannot divulge here due to confidentiality) to come up with the name. “
We believe, and the spokesperson has confirm it, that the new name should be FABLE. Again speaking on the condition of anonymity…
“The new name had to be cutting edge and be representative of the company post the buyout. We also wanted to be memorable and long lasting. The new name FABLE we believe does just that. ” So what does FABLE stand for ? or is it just another trendy name from Madison Avenue?
“On the contrary it – like the prior name of SABRE, the new name actually stands for something.
FULLY AUTOMATED BUSINESS LIABILITY COMPANY”. So what does this mean and what is its relevance. Again the Spokesperson
“That’s easy:
FULLY - we don’t want the company to do things in halves do we?
AUTOMATED - lets keep this IT flavor going
BUSINESS - well let’s face it - it is a commercial entity
LIABILITY - OK so this is a tough one but since we have seen how much debt Blackstone has loaded up to Travelport we can only assume that our new owners TPG and Silver Lake wanted to do the same to Sabre - er - I mean FABLE.
ENTERPRISE - lets think BIG here, not just a simple company we want to be a HUGE enterprise with Global ambitions. “
So there you have it... the new company, a new brand and a new identity. We anticipate over time that we will be renaming most of the product subgroups. For example we understand that the consumer brand will be renamed to reflect the growing emphasis on Desert Tourism. It will henceforth be known as CAMELOCITY with the Joe Camel brand brought back to life in a positive setting and a new role model for the next generation of travelers while still resonating with a sizeable portion of Baby Boomers who are ex-smokers.
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