GIP to Sell Gatwick Airport Stake to Abu Dhabi Sovereign Fund
February 04, 2010, 10:18 PM ESTBy Beth Mellor and Steve Rothwell
Feb. 5 (Bloomberg) -- Global Infrastructure Partners, which bought London’s Gatwick Airport in December, said it will sell a stake in the airport to Abu Dhabi Investment Authority.
The New York-based private-equity firm will retain a controlling stake in the airport, a spokesman for GIP said by telephone yesterday, while declining to specify the size of the stake the fund is selling or the terms of the agreement. The investment is a 15 percent stake valued at about 125 million pounds ($197 million), the London-based Times reported, without attribution.
GIP welcomes the sovereign wealth fund “as a long-term investor,” the spokesman said. The press office of Abu Dhabi Investment Authority could not be reached outside of office hours.
The global recession caused airline traffic to slump last year, with carriers cutting capacity to match falling demand. GIP bought Gatwick for 1.51 billion pounds from Spanish builder Grupo Ferrovial SA and this week agreed to sell a 12 percent stake to the National Pension Service, Korea’s biggest investor.
The sale of the holding to National Pension Service was part of a continuing process, and GIP is likely to agree to further transactions while retaining a “controlling stake,” Gatwick said Feb. 2.
Passenger numbers at Gatwick, the U.K.’s second-busiest airport, increased for a third consecutive month in December, the airport said on Jan. 28, helping reduce the full-year decline to 5.3 percent.
--Editors: Ben Livesey, Ken Wong
To contact the reporters on this story: Beth Mellor in London at bmellor@bloomberg.net; Steven Rothwell in London at srothwell@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Ben Livesey at blivesey@bloomberg.net Kenneth Wong at kwong11@bloomberg.net.
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