Gatwick has six bids for sale

OWNER of London Gatwick, BAA, has received six bids in its race against time to sell the airport.

Ferrovial, the Spanish construction and infrastructure group that recently took over BAA, is hurrying to offload the airport before the UK’s Competition Commission finishes its two-year investigation into BAA in March. Ferrovial hopes to sell it at a more favourable rate than if the Commission forces it to.

BAA and Ferrovial have asked for £2 billion but also included their £1.1 billion debt into the package, which has discouraged many potential bidders. Most are suggesting that the winning bid will be closer to £1.7 billion.

Confirmed bidders are:

  • A Canadian pension fund consortium along with 3i Infrastructure
  • Credit Suisse and General Electric’s Global Infrastructure Partners, which owns London City airport.
  • Gatwick Future Partnership led by Babcock & Brown European Infrastructure Fund and RREEF, the Deutsche Bank infrastructure fund.
  • Lysander Gatwick Investment, a consortium consisting of Citi Infrastructure Investors, Canada’s Vancouver Airport Services and John Hancock Life Insurance of the US. The group already owns the US’s first large privatised airport – Chicago Midway airport.Hochtief AirPort, part of Germany’s largest construction group, which already owns or partly owns airports in Hamburg, Düsseldorf, Sydney, Athens, Tirana and Budapest.
  • Manchester Airport Group along with Borealis, the Canadian infrastructure fund.

 

Gatwick Airport is the world’s busiest single-runway airport. There have been suggestions that the winning bidders may aggressively pursue the building of a second runway.

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