NEWS | Wednesday, 30 July 2008

BA and Iberia discuss merge

In view of the changing aviation landscape, national carriers for Spain and Britain yesterday announced they were in talks on a possible full merge.
The two airlines - British Airways and Iberia, already have shareholdings in each other’s capital. The British carrier owns 13.15 per cent of Iberia, while the Spanish company holds 2.99 per cent of British Airways.
The two companies also have agreements on 30 code-sharing routes and began a joint business operation between London on the one hand, and Madrid and Barcelona on the other, in 2005.
British Airways, with a market capitalization of €3.4 billion, is nearly three times the size of Iberia, with €1.5 billion, but British Airways said that the companies separate brand identities would be maintained – in similar fashion to the successful tie-up between Air France and the Dutch carrier KLM.