Gateway to pay up to €488m for 61% stake in TAP
Portugal should receive at least €354 million for the sale of a 61% stake in state airline TAP, and potentially as much as €488 million, depending on the company's performance, the government said, after it decided to accept a bid from Gateway, a joint venture between a US-Brazilian and a Portuguese investor.
The value of the deal is "measured by capitalisation, by the price paid for the shares and for the option to buy and sell", the secretary of state for the treasury, Isabel Castelo Branco, said at a news conference following the cabinet meeting where the decision was taken. The final amount, she explained, would only become clear two years from now.
Earlier, the secretary of state for transport, Sérgio Monteiro, said that while the amount involved was relatively small, the terms of the privatisation meant that much-needed capital would be injected into the company.
The government decided at Thursday's weekly cabinet meeting to sell TAP to Gateway - which is jointly held by US-Brazilian David Neeleman, owner of Brazil's third-largest airline, and Humberto Pedrosa, the chairman of Portugal's leading coach operator - rather than to Germán Efromovich, the Bolivian-born owner of another Brazilian airline and the only other bidder at this stage.
The prime minister, Pedro Passos Coelho, earlier told journalists at an event in Lisbon that the right-of-centre government had shown "a lot of courage" in pressing ahead with the privatisation in the face of strikes and opposition from campaigners. He noted that the first attempt to sell off TAP began in 1997, when the Socialist Party - which is opposing the current privatisation process - was in power.
With the European Union authorities still to approve the deal, the sale is unlikely to be completed before this autumn's general election. The Socialists - who are currently on level pegging with the governing coalition in the polls - have vowed to roll back the privatisation.
