Status: 09/14/2022 08:20 a.m
The federal government left Lufthansa completely after a good two years. For the state – and thus also for the taxpayers – the participation in the airline was an extremely lucrative commitment.
The federal government has ended its stake in the airline Lufthansa. The state economic stabilization fund (WSF) placed the remaining 74.4 million Lufthansa shares with international investors on Tuesday evening for a total of 455 million euros, the federal finance agency announced late in the evening. The WSF had saved the airline in the Corona crisis in 2020 with silent participations and a shareholding of 20 percent.
“The company is back in private hands,” said Jutta Dönges, who is responsible for the WSF as managing director of the finance agency. The stabilization has been successfully completed. Lufthansa had already repaid the silent participations in autumn 2021.
Profitable state participation
The Lufthansa rescue was worthwhile for taxpayers: at 1.07 billion euros, the total proceeds significantly exceeded the 306 million euros used to acquire the stake. The finance agency calculated that the bottom line was a profit of 760 million euros.
The head of the finance agency, Dönges, spoke of a “gratifying balance sheet”. 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.
Lufthansa shares offered at a lower price
Deutsche Bank and Goldman Sachs placed the last block of shares of 6.2 percent at a price of EUR 6.11 per share. That is 3.4 percent less than the XETRA closing price on Tuesday of EUR 6.32. At the end of July, the federal government had already reduced its share to less than ten percent. The Hamburg logistics entrepreneur and billionaire Klaus-Michael Kühne had thus risen to become the largest Lufthansa shareholder. Since then, the federal government has apparently thrown more shares onto the market in smaller numbers and has further reduced its stake.
The Lufthansa share is under pressure in early trading after the federal government completely exited the market. However, this is probably at least partly due to the clouded overall market and a negative industry study by the US financial services provider Stifel, which took a skeptical view of the prospects for airlines and airports.