Fairfax completes acquisition of BIAL shares

Pays Rs 2,522 crore to buy 38% stake in India's third-largest airport operator

Fairfax India, owned by Indian-born Canadian billionaire Prem Watsa, has completed the acquisition of 38 per cent share in Bangalore International Airport (BIAL), the operator of India’s third largest airport. The deal comes a year later after the firm announced its intention.
 
The firm paid Rs 2,522 crore for the shares. It will give Fairfax India the operational control over the airport that handled over 19 million passengers last year. 
 
Watsa’s company acquired 33 per cent stake from the debt-ridden GVK group and the other five per cent from Flughafen Zürich. The Centre and the state each own 13 per cent stake in the airport.

 

BIAL, which is building a second runway and looking at an additional terminal to handle growth in airlines, has seen its traffic double from 10.1 million in 2007-08.
 
In March 2016, Fairfax India agreed to purchase the stake from GVK for Rs 2,160 crore, implying an equity value of Rs 6,542 crore for the entire firm.
 
Concurrently, the financial services firm, through a wholly-owned subsidiary, entered into a separate agreement to acquire an additional five per cent equity from Zurich Airports’ interest in BIAL for Rs 320 crore.
 
The delay in getting security clearances from the government had led Watsa to meet Prime Minister Narendra Modi in January.

In a letter to the shareholders, he had said, “We are very excited about this investment.”
 
The acquisition comes when the country’s civil aviation sector is growing at about 25 per cent annually and the government eyeing an improvement in regional connectivity. The move would get more Indians to travel by air from smaller towns, acting as a feeder to large airports such as BIAL.
 
BIAL has 460 acres of excess land that can be monetised by the operator. So far, except building a hotel next to the airport and leasing it to Taj Hotels Resorts and Palaces on a management contract, the rest of the land is undeveloped.