Last week we informed that Aena will go public in November. Yesterday, Rafael Catalá confirmed this point during a conference at Executive Forum España.
As you may remember, Rafael Catalá is State Secretary for Infrastructure and, therefore, chairman of ENAIRE. ENAIRE, is the State company which is currently 100% responsible of Aena SA – formerly Aena Aeropuertos. Thus, ENAIRE is about to start the privatisation process of Aena SA by 49%.
El Confidencial, informed yesterday about this conference. Hence Aena will start trading on the stock exchange in early November. As expected, they will launch 28% of their share capital for private investors through an initial public offering (IPO).
Aena will go public in early November
Before this IPO starts, the Ministry of Development is expected to sell 21% of Aena SA among, at least, three main big shareholders. According to Catalá, this process has already started and already has several companies which have shown interest. One of these companies is Ryanair. But there are also other Spanish big investors which might be interested as well. According to CincoDías, FCC and Ferrovial are the interested companies which Aena likes best, but so far Ryanair is the only one which openly confirmed interest.
During the conference, Catalá said “the Aena privatisation process goes well. This will let the company continue to be one of the world’s leading airport operators with power to add value for the new investors as well as for the citizens. The latter, due to the fact that the State is keeping 51% of the share capital.
To Ana Pastor’s understanding, in spite of the fact that Aena will go public, it will continue to be a State company since they will keep the majority of shares. Moreover, “Aena does not receive any money from the Government. It is financed with their commercial policy and the airport charges, which will remain frozen until 2015“.
Investors to be informed about the Canary Islands discrepancies
Just after knowing the information from Catalá, the Government of the Canary Islands announced that the CNMV – Spanish Agency for market regulation – accepted to inform the investors about the fact that the Canary Islands aims to start legal actions against the privatisation.
According to 20minutos.es, the CNMV will add this information to the IPO’s brochure .
Photo: Rafael Catlá and Ana Pastor, on the right-hand side of the image, in 2012 / Flickr – Comunidad de Madrid
Pingback: Aena new shareholders to acquire 21% of the company - Flight Consulting
Pingback: Aena's IPO is postponed, at least, until February 2015 - Flight Consulting