Kenya Airways is moving closer to nationalisation as the carrier together with the National Treasury are conducting valuation of the individual and small shareholders to ascertain their value.
The airline opened talks with the minority shareholders as they seek to get them out of the shareholding ahead of the nationalisation of the carrier.
The shareholders who are in talks with the KQ include KLM and banks, who are discussing buyout plan of their stakes as the nationalisation process takes shape following the passage of the Bill that legally underpins the proposal.
The airline’s board chair Michael Joseph said the talks on reverting of shares to government has already started and discussions have been ongoing with all the involved parties.
“We are having discussion with minority shareholders that include banks to determine how to take them out of current shareholding,” he said.
Mr Joseph, who spoke during the company’s investors briefing, said they are also in talks with individual shareholders and they are at the moment in the process of valuing the shares, pointing out that they will be bought out once the valuation has been completed.
“Share prices are not true reflection of the value. We are at the moment doing the valuation and they (shareholders) will receive value for their shares,” he said.
He said the relevant Bill is currently at the committee stage in parliament and after it has been passed it will be taken to the President for endorsement, establishing an aviation holding company that will bring together all the aviation agencies at the airport.
Air-France KLM, which had the option of selling its stake to the government and staying on as a technical partner for the airline, has opted to exit.
Kenya has reached an agreement with Air-France KLM on the offer price, which will be a premium on the carrier’s prevailing trading price at the Nairobi bourse. The same KLM offer price will be used to acquire the minority shareholders, who hold about 2.8 percent of the shares currently valued at Sh397 million.
The state said in June that they had come up with a formula that will be used in buying out the minority shareholders.The government at the moment has a 50 percent stake on the national carrier, with 38 percent belonging to the banks after they converted their loans into shares, seven percent owned by the Dutch based airline KLM with the remaining shares owned by individual shareholders.In 2017, the State converted […]