Last minute agreement. TAP avoids nationalization
Negotiations continued into the early hours of Thursday, but Azul abdicated the possibility of converting 90 million loans to TAP into share capital.
After long hours of negotiations in the evening and early hours of Thursday morning, the government and Azul airline already have an agreement to avoid TAP’s nationalization, with only the last details missing for the formal announcement. Azul, in which David Neeleman has a stake, has abdicated the possibility of converting 90 million loans to TAP into share capital.
With this situation gone, and without nationalization, the state will have 70% of the company, Humberto Pedrosa 25% and the workers the other 5%. And the 1.2 billion euros of public aid to TAP will come.
Officially, none of the sides make comments, but several sources contacted by ECO already in the early hours of Thursday ensure that there is already an agreement in principle. The final details are still missing for the sides to assume that the agreement is totally secure. But all the indications suggest that only a last-minute rupture will prevent the signing of an agreement that avoids what was announced for this Thursday in the Council of Ministers: The approval of TAP’s nationalization decree.
As ECO had revealed at first hand, following the agreement with Azul, the state will buy 20% of the shares Atlantic Gateway has today in TAP (45%) and, at the same time, Pedrosa will buy David Neeleman’s stake in that company, and become the private shareholder of reference. The entrepreneur will receive 55 million euros to leave TAP and, with this shareholder restructuring, the Portuguese government will become the ‘controller’ of the company.
