Lufthansa issues EUR 475m promissory note; speculation over SAS grows
Lufthansa's possible takeover interest in Scandinavian airline SAS has been fuelled by the German airline's announcement of a EUR 475m financing agreement, according to Borsen.
This comes after a newswire report on Wednesday stating Lufthansa and SAS have been discussing a possible partnership. Neither SAS nor Lufthansa wished to comment on the matter.
A Sydbank analyst commented that it is interesting that that new loan has been announced in conjunction with the rumours regarding SAS. He also said however that the loan may just be normal part of Lufthansa's operations.
The paper reported that SAS is half owned by the Scandinavian governments and that the new loan would enable Lufthansa to take over the state-owned shares.
SAS has a market value of DKK 6.5bn (EUR 873m),
The original article appeared in print; Page 8.
Meanwhile, Lufthansa announced the following on 14 April:
Deutsche Lufthansa AG has taken advantage of the currently highly attractive promissory note market to place a promissory note loan. The promissory note was issued in tranches with terms of four and five-and-a-half years. The Group therefore secured further long-term financing on 6 April.
Due to the very positive demand, the originally set volume of the promissory note loan was increased from EUR 300m to EUR 475m. More than 80 investors took part in the transaction, in which non-European investors provided more than half of the volume. This underlines the confidence in Lufthansa as a borrower and the Group’s positive international reputation.
Lufthansa has a rating of BBB- (stable outlook) from S&P and Ba1 (positive outlook) from Moody's. The issue was arranged by the Landesbanken Baden-Württemberg and Hessen-Thüringen.