Lufthansa buying Austrian
July 28, 2009
Lufthansa has broken its stalemate with the European Union by proposing a new set of conditions for it to buy Austrian Airlines without harming competition, EU officials said Tuesday.
The EU's executive, the European Commission, has received the new proposal from Lufthansa, and will analyze the offer to see whether it is in line with EU competition rules, commission spokeswoman Maria Assimakopoulou told journalists in Brussels.
On Monday, a report in the Austrian newspaper Kurier said that as part of the deal, Lufthansa was prepared to give up key slots in order to get the AUA deal approved in Brussels.
The German carrier was ready to hand six of its 10 take-off and landing slots between Vienna and Frankfurt to its competitors, including Austrian low-cost airline Niki and Slovenia's Adria Airways, the report said.
It is the third set of proposals which Lufthansa has sent the commission in its bid to take over Austrian and become the largest airline in Europe by passenger numbers.
Kind of a big deal
Lufthansa originally agreed to buy the Austrian state's 42-per-cent stake in its debt-ridden national carrier in December for 366,000 euros ($510,000).
But the European Commission, which is charged with ensuring that takeover deals do not give any single company too much power, warned that the deal could give Lufthansa too much influence on routes out of Germany.
The Cologne-headquartered carrier then presented a revised proposal in the spring, but commission officials said that they liked it even less than the original.
Separately, on Tuesday Lufthansa said that it wanted to extend a 31 July deadline with the Austrian competition authorities by a month, to allow the German carrier more time to meet EU requirements.
The EU has said it could take until November to make a decision on the proposed merger.
mrh/dpa/AFP
Editor: Neil King