Swiss investors unite to rescue airline
The Swiss government, several Swiss billionaires and 15 of the country’s biggest companies on Monday threw their weight behind a plan to try to rebuild a Swiss national airline out of the remnants of Swissair.
The success of the SFr4bn (E2.7bn) rescue plan, known as Phoenix Plus, hung in the balance until the last moment, with the government unwilling to back the biggest corporate bailout in the country’s history without a matching contribution from the private sector.
Business leaders led by Rainer Gut, chairman of Nestle, the world’s biggest consumer food company, and Marcel Ospel, chairman of UBS, the country’s biggest bank, spent the morning drumming up last-minute private sector contributions to save the 70-year-old flag carrier.
Swisscom, the country’s telecoms company, has promised to contribute up to SFr100m, and the list of other corporate contributors includes Nestle, Hoffmann-La Roche, Novartis, Swiss Life, Zurich Insurance, Kudelski, Ciba Specialty Chemicals and Swiss Re.
Walter Haefner, one of Switzerland’s wealthiest individuals, has been joined by Thomas Schmidheiny, a former Swissair director whose family controls Holcim, and Bertarelli et Cie, the private company of Ernesto Bertarelli, the young chief executive of Serono, Europe’s biggest biotech company and a leading contender for the 2003 America’s Cup.
“The fact that this partnership has produced results illustrates the broad-based support for maintaining a national airline in the interests of the Swiss economy and the Swiss people,” said Mr Ospel.
In total, the public and private sectors are contributing SFr1.1bn and SFr1.9bn respectively to a recapitalisation of Crossair, the regional Swiss airline which will take over about two-thirds of Swissair’s fleet.
The Swiss Federal government will take a stake of 20 per cent in Crossair and several other Swiss cantons, led by Zurich, Swissair’s main hub, will take a 18 per cent stake in the new airline.
In addition, the Swiss government will provide SFr1.1bn to keep Swissair’s long-haul jets flying until they can be transferred to the new airline next Spring.
Kaspar Villiger, the country’s finance minister, said that the new airline would be “very well capitalised” but no one could guarantee its success.
Swiss officials made it clear that the government’s involvement was driven by fears that Zurich’s role as an important airline hub would be severely impaired if Switzerland’s national airline were allowed to collapse.
Mr Gut, 69, the Nestlechairman who is also a former chairman of Credit Suisse, will lead the transition committee that will oversee the formation of a new national airline around the lower cost base of Crossair.
Mr Ospel, chairman of UBS, which led the initial rescue attempt three weeks ago, said it had soon become clear the rescue would require more capital than the initial investors and even the capital markets could provide and that the only way for it to succeed would be to pool the pledged private sector capital with public funding.
The SFr1.9bn private sector contribution includes the SFr260m that UBS and Credit Suisse paid for stakes in Crossair and the earlier SFr350m equity issue which the two Swiss banks have promised to underwrite.
Andre Dose, Crossair’s chief executive, will head the new airline but it is unclear whether Moritz Suter, the founder and chairman of Crossair, will continue in his present role.
Financial Times
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