SPANISH INFRASTRUCTURE firm Ferrovial has sold part of its stake in British airport operator BAA Ltd to Qatar to finance its bid to push further into faster growing markets such as Latin America.
Ferrovial said yesterday it had sold a 10.6 per cent stake in FGP Topco, the holding company that owns BAA – which runs London Heathrow Airport – for €607 million to Qatar Holding, the finance arm of the Gulf Arab state’s sovereign wealth fund.
Ferrovial bought BAA in 2006 for £10.3 billion (€13.1 billion) in a highly-leveraged deal.
It had planned to keep all of the British firm’s airports and make them more efficient by outsourcing services, but BAA was forced by the UK regulator to sell Gatwick – Britain’s second busiest airport behind Heathrow – for which it got £1.5 billion in 2009.
It was also made to sell Edinburgh Airport, which was bought by Global Infrastructure Partners for £807 million in April.
In England, BAA currently owns Southampton and Stansted, which it is also being forced to sell, as well as Glasgow and Aberdeen airports in Scotland.
BAA’s other shareholders, Britannia Airport Partners and GIC, also sold stakes to Qatar Holding, which now has a 20 per cent stake in the UK operator. – (Reuters)