Marfin Investment Group Holdings S.A (“MIG”) announces today, Monday 22, October, the signing of the agreement for the sale of 100% of Olympic Air S.A (“Olympic”) to Aegean Airlines S.A (“Aegean”).
The transaction consideration is €72 million in cash to be paid in installments. Following completion of the transaction, Olympic will become a subsidiary of the listed Aegean. In addition, both the Olympic and Aegean brands will be used in parallel whilst each company will retain its distinct flight operations, fleet and personnel. The administrative, commercial and technical services will be consolidated gradually for the extraction of necessary cost synergies and the enhancement in the utilisation of fleet and netowrk.
The transaction is subject to the approval of the competent Competition Commission authorities and all other relevant regulatory authorities, which will ultimately determine the timetable for its completion.
Commenting on the agreement, MIG’s Chief Executive Officer Mr. Efthimios Bouloutas made the following statement:
“In 2009, Marfin decided to acquire Olympic Air through the privatization process from the Greek government with an aim to restore the most iconic Greek brand to its former glory. Amidst a very challenging economic environment and within a relatively short period of time, Marfin is very proud that it has been successful in achieving this aim creating a company of an excellent level of service, quality and reliability with a very modern fleet. We believe that Marfin has played a pivotal role in the upgrade of the level of services provided in the Greek air transportation market.
Nevertheless, the continuously deteriorating domestic economic environment through a prolonged recession has led to an inevitable decline in passenger volumes arising mainly from the reduction of domestic consumers’ disposable income. This, coupled with the overall unfavorable macroeconomic environment in South East Europe as well as a sharp increase of fuel prices, have rendered the transaction necessary for the viability of the Greek airline industry. We believe that without the envisaged transaction, the continued losses and inevitable retraction of activities by domestic carriers would increase the country’s interdependence to international carriers thus jeopardizing Greece’s connectivity and tourism industry. Through this agreement we have contractually secured the future use of the Olympic brand, an indispensable part of Greek heritage, while we believe we have significantly enhanced the chances for the continuous and seamless interconnection of Greece both domestically and internationally.
The sale is consistent with MIG’s stated strategy to focus on core assets with positive fundamentals that will create shareholder value as Greece’s economy slowly recovers from the deepest recession in recent years.”
