Tuesday, July 10, 2007

Virgin Atlantic going forward?

There has been recent press speculation that Singapore Airlines, one of the largest airlines in the world, is thinking of trying to offload the 49% of the shares that it owns in Virgin Atlantic. Singapore paid around £600m for the stake in Virgin seven years ago which was of course before the airline world was turned upside down by the events of 9/11. Since then there has been some code sharing between the airlines, but nothing much in the way of dividends, and Singapore are perhaps wondering if they could find a better home for the £600m. Trouble is they might have difficulty extracting the cash, Sir Richard Branson has said that he might buy the stake back, but we're not sure he has that much tucked under the mattress.
Another large airline may be interested, but with only 49% and therefore no controlling interest up for grabs, what would be the attraction?
bmi has been mooted as a partner for Virgin several times in the past, but they seem to be ploughing their own furrow quite nicely thank you after acquiring BMED, which we still can't quite believe BA allowed to be sold from under their noses.
Maybe Singapore will try and float their stake but that could prove more difficult than it sounds, perhaps in the meantime they could try and achieve more on the operational front when the Open Skies agreement kicks in.

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