{"id":552,"date":"2009-11-13T04:22:28","date_gmt":"2009-11-13T10:22:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/?p=552"},"modified":"2009-11-13T08:28:04","modified_gmt":"2009-11-13T14:28:04","slug":"british-iberia-consolidation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/british-iberia-consolidation\/","title":{"rendered":"British and Iberia deal eyes future consolidation"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"British<\/a>British Airways’ merger with Spain’s Iberia will give the two loss-making airlines the scale they need to ride out recession and compete with larger European rivals Lufthansa and Air France.<\/strong><\/p>\n

The agreement, which will create a group with a combined market value of $7 billion if it goes through next year, ends the British carrier’s two-year hunt for Iberia, and will allow it to emulate rivals who have successfully acquired smaller peers.<\/p>\n

BA shareholders will have 55 percent of the combined firm, to be headquartered in London with 419 aircraft flying to 205 destinations, while Iberia shareholders are to get 45 percent.<\/p>\n

BA’s Chief Executive Willie Walsh, who will be CEO of the new group, wants to take on Air France-KLM — formed from a Franco-Dutch merger in 2004 — and Lufthansa, which has successfully combined with Swiss International Airlines and Austrian Airlines in recent years.<\/p>\n

“The deal will give them the potential to grow in a tough market that low-cost rivals can’t match without losing money,” Joaquin Garcia-Romanillos, analyst for Portuguese bank BPI said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

British Airways’ merger with Spain’s Iberia will give the two loss-making airlines the scale they need to ride out recession and compete with larger European rivals Lufthansa and Air France.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[68,63,51,118,117,14],"tags":[509,507,1182,1183,1186,1178,1179,1184,944,1180,1185],"class_list":["post-552","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-business","category-daily","category-economy","category-hot","category-travel","category-world","tag-british-airway","tag-british-airways","tag-british-airways-90th-anniversary","tag-british-airways-london-to-new-york","tag-chief-executive-willie-walsh","tag-continental-airlines","tag-europe-airline","tag-europe-british-airways","tag-iberia","tag-iberia-airlines","tag-lufthansa-and-air-france"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/552","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=552"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/552\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=552"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=552"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=552"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}