SPECIAL REPORT: SUSTAINABILITY
The stakes are high
David Bentley takes a closer look at airport ownership and the different and ever-changing business models.
A 26
s Bob Dylan intoned, the times they are a-changing and that is certainly the case in the arcane world of airport ownership and investment. Where real estate companies and surface transport operators
like bus and rail companies were the willing investors a decade or so ago, they have largely moved on now, to be replaced by pension funds, hedge funds, private equity, transport sector-designated investment funds and sovereign wealth funds. The problem is, does the investor have the capability to manage the
complex business of running an airport? For every instance where that has been the case (and there are several in Europe, for example), there are others (in Latin America, for instance), where legitimate questions continue to be asked about ownership and management models that can cost the airlines more than many routes can sustain. If we look at some recent airport sales and lease transactions (and there
aren’t many) there are some participants that were simply not on the radar a couple of years ago. The €100 million, 20-year concession to operate Kosovo’s Pristina Airport was won by a consortium of Turkey’s Limak Investments, which is involved in a similar deal – with India’s GMR
AIRPORT WORLD/AUGUST-SEPTEMBER 2010
Infrastructure and Malaysia Airports Holdings Berhad – at Istanbul’s Sabiha Gökçen Airport, and Lyon Airport, which is not known as a foreign investor. London Gatwick Airport was ‘snapped up’ from BAA in December
2009 by the Global Infrastructure Partner’s $5.6 billion fund, managed by Credit Suisse and General Electric; and then subsequently, a large part of the equity was offered out to two pension funds, one from South Korea and one from California, and to Abu Dhabi’s sovereign wealth fund. Eyebrows were raised in 2006 when a private Spanish company, Ferrovial, led a consortium that took over the UK’s BAA plc but no-one could then have imagined that a signifi cant part of that empire would only three years later be managed by such funds. Pension funds have long been keen on infrastructure assets with
guaranteed longevity and returns such as airports can (usually) provide and Canada has no less than four of them, all actively scrutinising the business for investment opportunities. While they have grown in number, there has been some stagnation amongst several of the infrastructure companies, with the exception of India. France’s Vinci Concessions, for instance, began to scale down its international activities (Mexico, China, and Africa) in the airport sector over
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74 |
Page 75 |
Page 76 |
Page 77 |
Page 78 |
Page 79 |
Page 80 |
Page 81 |
Page 82 |
Page 83 |
Page 84 |
Page 85 |
Page 86 |
Page 87 |
Page 88