Tomorrow Tuesday is an important date for the future of Klagenfurt Airport. The state-owned Carinthia investment management decides in the supervisory board meeting whether the call option will be exercised and the majority currently held by Lilihill will buy back.
In the course of the partial privatization, it was agreed that the public sector would have the option of buying back the aircraft if the annual number of passengers fell below an agreed level. This is exactly what happened due to the corona pandemic and the state government obtained its own expert opinion, which came to the conclusion that corona cannot be used as an “excuse”. The country can therefore exercise the call option.
KBV currently holds 20 percent of the airport company. The city of Klagenfurt is on board with a small stake, while Lilihill holds the majority. The investor wanted in early autumn of the previous year take over the airport completely, but bit with the request on granite or on the resistance of the Carinthian state politics.
The ideas for the further development of Klagenfurt Airport differ greatly. Lilihill wants the site, among other things, with the help of Construction of the Aviation City strengthen, but the public sector opposes it. They want to prevent the airport from selling land to Lilihill. Defense Minister Klaudia Tanner (ÖVP) recently presented the Expansion of military use in prospect.
In the meantime, the mood has become so muddled that the state government has announced that it will buy back the majority. It is now the turn of the supervisory board of Kärnten Beteiligungsverwaltung and will decide on Tuesday whether the call option will be exercised or not. Should one decide to buy back about 80 percent would be in the hands of the state of Carinthia again. This would make Klagenfurt the only Austrian airport that was partially privatized, only to be transferred back to state ownership just a few years later.
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