After greater than two years of fierce battle, the airline SAS has now formally emerged from its chapter safety.
This additionally welcomes the brand new possession group consisting of the non-public fairness agency Castlelake, the airline Air France-KLM, Lind Make investments, and the Danish state.
That is acknowledged in a press launch on Wednesday morning.
– This marks a brand new starting for SAS. The corporate is reborn as a aggressive and financially sturdy firm with a strengthened capital construction, based on the announcement.
The possession group has determined to nominate a brand new board to be led by 63-year-old Kåre Schultz.
Till the top of 2022, the Dane Schultz was the CEO of Israeli Teva. He has beforehand served as deputy CEO at Novo Nordisk and CEO at Lundbeck.
“SAS has finished a really spectacular job of navigating by way of the restructuring procedures and constructing a aggressive firm that’s positioned for progress,” says Kåre Schultz.
He takes over from Carsten Dilling, who has been chairman since 2018.
Kåre Schultz has beforehand helped get an organization heading in the right direction. He did this amongst different issues with Danish Lundbeck and later Teva.
The debt-ridden firm utilized for chapter safety within the USA in mid-2022 after which started the so-called chapter 11 course of.
This gave SAS peace of thoughts to concentrate on the restoration of the corporate with out having to fret about collectors wanting their a refund.
Each a courtroom within the USA, the EU, and the Swedish authorized system have since accepted SAS’s restoration plan.
The brand new house owners carry an funding of 1.2 billion {dollars}, equal to simply over eight billion kroner.
Finance Minister Nicolai Wammen (S) is glad with the ultimate outcome.
“I’m happy {that a} outcome has been achieved that meets the political settlement on SAS from June 2022,” he says on the ministry’s web site.
In June 2022, the minister pledged that the Danish state needed to proceed as a co-owner of the corporate. However provided that a number of non-public actors is also discovered who wished to enter the enterprise.
SAS lately took one of many large steps in direction of concluding the method when the corporate was delisted from the inventory trade. This occurred on August 13.
The corporate should now begin wanting ahead, believes Jacob Pedersen, head of fairness evaluation at Sydbank.
“After the key rescue operation, SAS is in a considerably higher place financially,” he says.
“The corporate has a lot much less debt, a lot decrease prices, and has obtained new cash within the financial institution from the brand new possession group.
Kåre Schultz’s first and largest job will likely be to put out a plan for the way the corporate can develop,” assesses Jacob Pedersen.
“Now SAS has nearly shrunk completely over the previous 20 years, however now we’re prone to get an SAS that will likely be extra wanting to develop, based on him.
