Qantas accepts $8.7 billion takeover
Australia’s Qantas Airways agreed on Thursday to a sweetened $8.7 billion buyout offer from a group led by Macquarie Bank Ltd. and private equity firm Texas Pacific Group in the world’s biggest airline takeover.
The sale of the national icon, dubbed the flying kangaroo, has stirred nationalistic sentiment and reached the top levels of Australian politics, prompting the bidding group to stress that the airline would remain majority Australian owned.
However, Prime Minister John Howard signaled the government was unlikely to interfere in any change of hands of the airline, founded 86 years ago in outback Queensland as an air taxi service.
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"I hope that the Qantas we know is the Qantas we keep. People like Qantas. It is an icon. That doesn’t mean to say its shares can’t change hands," Howard told Australian Broadcasting Corp. radio.
The offer tops an $8.6 billion bid for bankrupt Delta Airlines by U.S. Airways Goup in November, and would be the biggest private equity buyout in Asia, outside of Japan, if approved by shareholders early next year.
It coincides with a wave of consolidation talk across the industry, including recent merger talks between UAL Corp., parent of United Airlines, and Continental Airlines
The offer of A$5.60 a share, 10 percent above Qantas’s last trade on Wednesday, was unanimously endorsed by the Qantas board after the bidders dropped a demand for a break-up fee and simplified other conditions, Qantas chairman Margaret Jackson said.
The board rejected an offer of A$5.50 on Wednesday
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