the EU commission authorizes the Aegean Airlines Greek to buy the compatriot Olympic Air



The EU commission has authorized the Greek airline Aegean Airlines to acquire the compatriot Olympic Air of the group Marfin Investment Group Holdings (MIG), operation that is approved of by the shareholders of the two societies already to beginning 2010 and capacity to term only at the end last year after in 2011 it was blocked by same the EU commission ( on January 26, 2011 and 22 October 2012).

Today Brussels has explained that a deepened investigation has assessed that, if did not come acquired from Aegean Airlines, soon Olympic Air would be forced to exit from the market because of its difficulties to finance and that in such case Aegean it would become the single airline to offer to services in Greece acquiring the current market share of the Olympic. Therefore - it has found the EU commission - "with or without the fusion, Olympic soon would have come to lack which concurrent Aegean. Therefore the fusion does not determine alterations to the competition that would not have happened in any case".

Brussels has evidenced that from the moment of its privatization in the 2009 financial Olympic it has not never generated useful and it has instead received a remarkable support by shareholder only MIG; moreover it is absolutely improbable that the company can generate profits in the near future any business plan can be applied. The Commission has remembered that MIG had decided not to support Olympic more financially if the cession to Aegean had not gone successfully and has specified that a market survey has confirmed that not other credible interested purchaser is no to buy Olympic with the exception of Aegean.

"He is obvious - he has observed the vice president of the EU commission, Joaquín Almunia, in charge of the competition - than, because of lasting of the Greek crisis and the extremely difficult financial situation of the same Olympic, this would have been soon obliged to exit from the market in any case. Therefore we have approved of the fusion because it does not have an ulterior impact negative on the competition".

The EU commission has remembered that in Greece the economic recession has caused a decrease of the -26% of the question of national aerial transport of passengers with departure from Athens, that is come down from 6,1 million passengers in 2009 to 4,5 million in 2012, bending that are continued in the first semester of 2013, period in which is recorded a contraction of the -6,3% regarding the first half of 2012. Moreover during the last few years the number of served routes is from Aegeans that give Olympic remarkablly have been reduced. The Commission has specified that, when in 2011 had examined the precedence attempt of Aegean to acquire Olympic, the two companies in competition offered services on 17 aerial routes, of which nine they had raised worries from the point of view of the competition, while currently Aegean and Olympic overlap on sun seven routes between which five national routes only operated by the two companies (Athens-Chania; Athens-Mytilene; Athens-Santorini; Athens-Corfù; Athens-Kos). "The market survey - it has specified Brussels - has revealed that in the near future the income of other companies in any of these routes is improbable. This has had to a series of reasons: potential the new operators see more profitable opportunities elsewhere, consider that the income costs too much are elevated or they do not approach national Greek at the market because of the current difficult economic situation of Greece".