TAP’s management is examining the implications of an opinion from the Civil Aviation Authority that the company’s sale agreement with Gateway did not comply with European airline competition rules.
The National Civil Aviation Authority has blocked the initial agreement to sell a 61% stake in TAP to Gateway, owned by David Neeleman and Humberto Pedrosa, in the dying moments of the Pedro Passos Coelho government as it has found evidence that the deal was inconsistent with European rules.
In a statement released yesterday, the regulator announced that it has decided to impose precautionary measures on TAP which prevents the airline’s management taking any major decisions for three months while the mess is sorted out.
Decisions that are allowed are those that "have no significant impact on the assets, activity and operation in the two companies TAP and Portugalia."
In response to the Authority’s decision, TAP management said only that it is "analysing the respective implications."
The inconsistency comes from analyying the suspicion that in fact David Neeleman controls Gateway, and hence TAP, despite the Brazilan born American businessman holding a lesser shareholding in Gateway than the Portuguese bus company owner, Humberton Pedrosa.
Neeleman is a non-European; non-European control of a European airline is prohibited.
The Minister of Planning, Pedro Marques, said that the aviation regulator's opinion gives reason to criticise the privatisation of TAP by the previous government, made "in the dead of night," before the Passos Coelho government finally was replaced by the Socialsists.
Things have moved on since the original deal, with the new government recently agreeing with Gateway to raise its stake to 50%. A subsidiary clause in the same memorandum of understanding enables a Chinese airline to buy into Gateway, thus qualifying Hainan Airlines to have directors on the board of TAP.
The minister stressed that the opinion of the National Civil Aviation Authority has no impact on the current negotiation process of the Government to assume control of 50% of TAP, or in the daily operation of TAP.
Asked if the opinion released today calls into question the current Socialist government’s negotiations, Pedro Marques said it did not and that the new deal for the State to own 50% of TAP also had to be run past the National Civil Aviation Authority.
The current freezing of decision making powers at TAP, according to Marques has to do with the previous privatisation by the coalition Government and that TAP will continue to operate normally day-to-day.
