The biggest talker in the airline industry has just talked.
Continue reading: Qatar Airways Wants To Buy Lufthansa Stake (But Probably Won’t)
Share your questions, experiences, and thoughts below.
I would suggest that Mr Al Baker spend his time, effort, and money in trying to make Qatar Airways profitable.
The state of Qatar and the European Union have signed a new air transport agreement which gives Qatar Airways more access to the European market. It is expected that next year they will expand service from the current 5 daily flights to Germany (2x FRA, 2x MUC, 1x TXL) significantly by adding flights to DUS, STR, HAM and a second daily TXL flight.
Qatar may be looking at Lufthansa to provide them some short-haul feed and probably more connections to South America.
In terms of investing Qatar Airways is free to acquire Lufthansa shares on the open market, however keep in mind that 51% of the shares have to be held by European investors (otherwise Lufthansa would not count as European airline anymore and would loose market access).
As a significant amount of Lufthansa shares are held by foreign etfs who can not simply sell to Qatar Airways this limits the amount of shares they can practically acquire.
The German regulators are unfairly protecting Lufthansa by restricting access to the Gulf carriers. Open Skies agreement now!
@Ray Qatar and the EU already have agreed on that, becoming effective next year. UAE has not offered anything meaningful to the EU and therefore does not get an Open Skies agreement.
“We did not have Lufthansa privatised in Germany to have it nationalised in Qatar.”
That statement is so stupid in many ways - first of all, if they want to distance themselves from governmental influence, how about opening up German skies then? Can't have your cake and eat it too.
Secondly, it goes to show what being "privatised" does to an airline - LH is a pile of garbage while I would fly Qatar Airways over them every time.
IMO...it's foolishness or strategy. Hear me out:
Foolish- he's just informed competition of his intention/moves giving them the opportunity to
a- LH perform stock buy backs to gain a greater stake in their game
b- competition purchases greater stock in LH and ices him out
Strategy- he's counting on the moves above and can
a- cry foul protectionism by LH and bring legal action to allow Qatar (among others) greater opportunities to service Germany
b- watch other outside competition purchase greater stake in LH that may potentially open services from said competition allowing Qatar to expand without any additional cash output all by throwing a thought out in the universe
It'll be interesting to see what/if anything comes of his statement.