Lufthansa’s second-largest shareholder sells half its stake

Lufthansa’s second-largest shareholder sold more than half its stake in the airline group, three months after the death of family patriarch Heinz Hermann Thiele.

The shares fell on Friday after KB Holding GmbH sold 33 million shares at a €9.80 each, a 9.8 per cent discount to their closing price a day earlier.

Thiele built an around 12 per cent stake in Lufthansa before his death in February. The timing of the €323 million disposal means Thiele’s heirs received prices about one-third below where Lufthansa traded before the coronavirus crisis slammed the airline industry.

Europe’s largest carrier required a €9 billion bailout to survive, while cutting back on its fleet and staffing. The company recently gained investor approval to raise up to €5.5 billion in capital to pay down some of the debt it took on.

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The shares slipped about 5 per cent in pre-market trading Friday on Tradegate.

The Thiele family remains the largest private shareholder in Lufthansa, after the German government, which obtained a 20 per cent holding with the bailout last year. The family had previously cut its stake to 10.1 per cent, according to regulatory filings.

Thiele, who was 79 when he died, took centre stage last year as an activist investor in a drama gripping Lufthansa. After building his stake, he expressed dissatisfaction with the German government’s rescue plan, before ultimately supporting it.

His family may owe German authorities more than €5 billion in inheritance taxes, potentially the largest such bill in the country’s history, according to ManagerMagazin. Thiele’s assets were meant to be placed in a foundation to reduce tax risks, but it wasn’t set up when he died, the magazine reported in April.

Thiele built an empire spanning real estate, industrials and agriculture after starting his career in 1969 at Knorr-Bremse AG, the brake-system manufacturer he turned into a global leader.

Lufthansa shares closed little changed Thursday at €10.87 in Frankfurt. The company has a market value of €6.5 billion. – Bloomberg