Thomas Cook reports £398m annual loss

Travel firm Thomas Cook has announced a £398m ($616m) annual loss for the year to the end of September. Its results were hit by exceptional charges of £573m, but said its UK "turnaround plan" was under way. It also said it would close 200 "under performing" stores from its 1,300 portfolio over the next two years. It comes a day after Thomas Cook sold Spanish hotel chain Hotels Y Clubs De Vacaciones (ICV) to Grupo Iberostar for 72.2m euros ($95.4m; £61m). The world's oldest travel agency has been looking to cut its debts to restore the confidence of investors In November it secured £200m of new financing, just days after seeing its shares plunge 75% in one day. Its lenders, including Barclays, HSBC, RBS and UniCredit, agreed to provide the new facility until 30 April 2013. Thomas Cook has blamed the unrest in Egypt and Tunisia and floods in Thailand, all key holiday destinations for the company, for hitting sales. "This has been a very challenging year for the group, despite which we still delivered an underlying operating profit of over £300m," said chief executive Sam Weihagen. But he told the BBC that, despite the shop closures, the company still had a "very strong presence on the High Street". However he admitted that the business had been hit by "e-commerce" - people booking holidays on the internet. Shares in the company have shed more than 90% of their value since March.