The Danish government said it was ready on Friday to write off debts and inject money into the Scandinavian airline SAS to help it overcome its serious financial difficulties, leading to a sharp rebound in the group’s action.
The Danish state, the largest shareholder with the Swedish state with 21.8% each, is ready to increase its stake to 30%, Danish Finance Minister Nicolai Wammen announced at a press conference.
‘SAS is in a very serious situation. With this agreement today, there is a consensus for the State to take its share of the responsibility for restoring SAS’, he affirmed.
Following a political agreement with several parties in Parliament, Denmark is ready to ‘inject new equity’ into SAS to achieve a stake between its current level ‘and up to around 30%’, according to the text of the the agreement published by the government.
In order to support SAS, the Danish state is also ready ‘to accept a haircut and conversion of its existing financial instruments’ into SAS, ‘at market conditions’.
Copenhagen is thus ready to erase 3.5 billion crowns (regarding 489 million francs) that the company owes it, specified the minister.
SAS shares, which hit a new historic low on Thursday following the threat of a strike by the company’s pilots from the end of June, showed a huge rebound following these announcements.
Ensuring that the survival of the company is threatened, the management of SAS announced in February a savings plan called ‘SAS Forward’, supplemented last week by a capital increase project of nearly one billion euros. euros.
Conversions of existing debt into securities are also planned, up to 2 billion euros.
Sweden announced on Tuesday that it refused to participate in the capital increase, but that it agreed to convert existing debt into capital.
/ATS