You have to bear in mind though that AIA is as much a property company as anything else, given all the development they do on their land surrounding the airport.
The more that I hear about this Virgin sale process, the more I wonder if it was just a decision made in haste by AIR because Luxon could no longer work with Borghetti.
This announcement to "explore options" was made three weeks ago. To me it seems that there are surely a pretty short list of options for AIR: sell quickly or sell slowly. I think I would've expected to hear some progress by now. Something doesn't quite smell right about this to me.
I also wonder about the articles from today about Luxon failing to roll Borghetti. Is this a controlled leak from VAH or AIR? Doesn't feel like it would be because it doesn't seem to benefit either side. If not a controlled leak, where did it come from?
One of the worst kept secrets in aviation down under is that Air has been unhappy with VAH's turnaround progress for quite some time now. There's bound to have already been a lot of friction at board level and specifically between Mr Borghetti and Mr Luxon. Sure things could have blown up at the board meeting and C.L. could have resigned on the spot after failing to get the support of other shareholders, (in fact I'd put money on that) but its been coming for a long time. I think its clear the AIR board see Mr Borghetti as a 60 year old "cruiser" and is simply not doing the business in terms of generating an acceptable return on capital. If the other shareholders won't back AIR for a change then they're doing the right thing putting their shareholding under review. These things always take longer then you think, regulatory approval, pre-emptive rights, code share arrangements and so on. If they managed to execute a clean deal before balance date (30 June 2016) at or about current market price I'd see that as a good result. A nice clean unimpeded flight path is a beautiful thing. Happy to hold and happy with the direction the board are headed with this.
Business Spectator -
Worries about the upcoming federal election and dwindling consumer confidence have pushed Qantas to slash its expectations for capacity growth as the end of the financial year arrives.
The airline on Monday said its domestic capacity growth over the last three months of the 2016 financial year will now be negative compared to the same time last year.
JUST AS WELL NZ DOMESTIC ECONOMY BOOMING
“ At the top of every bubble, everyone is convinced it's not yet a bubble.”
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Originally Posted by Roger
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