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Lufthansa machines at Berlin Schönefeld Airport (2020): rescue operation ended
Photo: Fabrizio Bensch/ REUTERS
It was a rescue operation in the wake of the corona crisis: the federal government supported Lufthansa in 2020 with silent participations and a shareholding of 20 percent.
After two years, the State Economic Stabilization Fund (WSF) has now left the airline again.
And with a clear profit.
The Federal Finance Agency announced that the WSF placed the remaining 74.4 million Lufthansa shares with international investors on Tuesday evening for a total of 455 million euros.
With the sale of the shares, the WSF earned a total of 1.07 billion euros.
The finance agency calculated that the bottom line was a profit of 760 million euros.
Lufthansa had already repaid the silent participations in autumn 2021.
“The participation of the WSF ends with this pleasing balance sheet and the company is back in private hands,” said the outgoing head of the finance agency, Jutta Dönges, who is responsible for the WSF.
This completes the stabilization of Lufthansa.
The state is getting out earlier than it had set itself the goal: the WSF was actually not supposed to sell the remaining shares until autumn 2023.
Deutsche Bank and Goldman Sachs placed the last package of 6.2 percent at a price of EUR 6.11 per share.
That's 3.4 percent less than Tuesday's Xetra closing price of EUR 6.32.
At the end of July, the federal government had already reduced its stake to less than ten percent, since then it has apparently thrown more shares onto the market in smaller numbers and melted the stake.
In 2020, the aviation sector was one of the sectors hardest hit economically by the corona pandemic.
The federal government supported Lufthansa in June 2020 with stabilization measures of up to six billion euros.
mmq/Reuters/dpa
