25th Jun 2020 11:11
(Alliance News) - Low-cost carrier Ryanair Holdings PLC will challenge the EUR9-billion rescue of Germany's Deutsche Lufthansa AG, one of the world's biggest airlines, before an EU court, a top executive said on Thursday.
"We have said to the commission we will appeal all other decisions and all approvals: the same goes for today's approval of aid to Lufthansa,"Â Juliusz Gomorek, Ryanair's chief legal officer, told reporters.Â
Ryanair has already appealed to the Luxembourg-based General Court against aid granted by France, Denmark and Sweden to airlines and cleared by EU competition enforcers.
The fate of Germany's ailing Lufthansa airline will be decided later Thursday at an extraordinary shareholders' meeting, in which a EUR9 billion government bailout will be put to a vote.
Lufthansa has spiralled into crisis as a result of the catastrophic impact of the coronavirus pandemic on air travel.
The deal, which Lufthansa has said is necessary in order to save the company from insolvency, would require the German government taking a 20% share in the company.
Valued at around EUR300 million, that stake is only a small part of the total package - but it has irked investors, who will see their own shares diluted as a result of the state intervention. Meanwhile, the government is set to pay EUR2.56 per share, around a quarter of the current stock market price.
The outcome of the online meeting largely comes down to one man, Lufthansa's biggest shareholder, Heinz Hermann Thiele.
He had been critical of the deal, but in an interview with the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung on Wednesday he said he had decided to vote in favour of it.
Shareholder presence at the online meeting is expected to represent less than 50% of capital. This means a two-thirds majority is needed in the vote - which would have been a tall order without Thiele's backing. He holds a 15.5% stake.
The bailout was negotiated between Lufthansa, the Berlin government and the European Commission.
The commission, which acts as the EU's antitrust watchdog, gave its official approval to the multi-billion-dollar deal on Thursday.
source: AFP
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