Gatwick Airport sold to City Airport owners for £1.5bn
BAA today sold Gatwick Airport to Global Infrastructure Partners, who also owns the City Airport, for £1.5 billion. In case you missed our tweet earlier today, here is the full report.
LONDON (MarketWatch) — U.K. airports operator BAA on Wednesday reached a pact to sell London’s Gatwick Airport for 1.5 billion pounds ($2.5 billion) as part of forced divestiture to enhance competition.BAA, a unit of Spain’s Ferrovial (ES:FER), said it was selling the airport to Global Infrastructure Partners, a fund backed by investments from Credit Suisse (CS) and General Electric (GE), and with holdings ranging from waste management group Biffa to London City Airport.Of the sale price, 55 million pounds is conditional on future traffic performance and the buyer’s future capital structure.BAA had put Gatwick for sale in September 2008, before a final ruling from the Competition Commission that it had to sell the airport, as well as London Stansted and airports in either Edinburgh or Glasgow.Gatwick is the busiest single-runway airport in the world, handling 32.2 million passengers in the year to September.During the first half of the year, Gatwick earned 68.7 million pounds before interest, tax, depreciation and amortization, on revenue of 217 million pounds.BAA will use proceeds from the Gatwick sale to pay down debt. BAA carried 14.6 billion euros ($21.8 billion) of debt at the end of the first half. BAA’s crown jewel, however, is London’s Heathrow, which carried 65.7 million passengers during that time period. “BAA will focus on improving Heathrow and our other airports,” the company said in a statement.Ferrovial shares dropped 2.9% in early Madrid trade.
Six months on, and with passengers stabalising (excluding the affect of the ash crisis, that saw them fall by 20% last month), this still looks like a great deal for GIP. And having travelled through the airport recently, they seem to be sticking to their promises. The journey though security was noticably quicker than the last time I went through it, even during the morning peak.