Aegean Airlines, Chrysler Aviation make offers to buy Olympic Airlines

Aegean Airlines, a private airline company based in Greece, and Chrysler Aviation, a leading aircraft charter and management company based in the United States, have put forward new bids for Olympic Airlines, the national carrier of Greece.

While Aegean Airlines has offered €170 million for buying the debt-ridden Olympic Airlines, Chrysler Aviation made an offer of €210 million, media reports said. Both the offers have been made for the three companies of Olympic Airlines – the flying operations company Panteon, the land services, and the technical support base.

The offers came a month after the Greek government made a public appeal to investors to rescue Olympic Airlines, following an earlier tender which failed to attract suitable bids.

A statement from Aegean Airlines said that it had offered €90 million for the flying operations company Panteon, €60 million for the stock capital and €20 million for the technical support base.

Aegean Airlines, which is the main competitor of Olympic Airlines in Greece’s domestic routes, said it was interested in buying Olympic Airlines’ flight operations, technical maintenance and also a company set up by the government to succeed Olympic Airlines.

In addition to Olympic Airlines’ three companies, Chrysler Aviation has offered to buy Olympic’s real estate properties by offering the Greek government to hold the ownership of 254% of them, the website iht.com reported.

Other reports said that the government of Greece was already negotiating with Marfin Investment Group and Swissport, which made had their offers a month ago.

While Marfin Investment Group had offered €45.7 million for Panteon, another €60 million for the stock capital of the company and an additional €16.7 million for the technical support base, Swissport had offered €44.8 million for the land services. Altogether, the offers of both companies came to €177.2 million.

Olympic Airlines, which was founded in 1957 by the late shipping magnate Aristotle Onassis, saw a steady decline after it was operated for many decades by the Greek government.

The carrier has been reporting a loss of about 450 million euros a year, and its accumulated losses come to about €2.7 billion ($3.41 billion). After the sale, the new company will keep the Olympic Airlines’ name and logo.

The government of Greece has been, for many years, seeking private investors to take over Olympic Airlines, but the government’s efforts were hampered by the European Commission’s insistence that the company repay the state aid which it had received “unlawfully.”

The last attempt by the Greek government to privatise Olympic Airlines was in September 2008. At that time, the government had initiated a tender to divide the company into three units – flying, ground handling, and aircraft maintenance – in order to facilitate selling.