Friday November 12th 2021
Increasing demand for flights
Lufthansa pays back the last tranche of aid
Lufthansa is paying off the debts that the airline took on from taxpayers during the Corona crisis faster than expected: With the transfer of one billion euros to the state treasury, all of the aid has been repaid. For the time being, however, the state will remain a shareholder.
Lufthansa repaid all the state’s corona aid earlier than planned. On Friday, one billion euros went to the Federal Republic’s Economic Stabilization Fund (WSF), and funds that were not called up were also canceled, Lufthansa announced. The state still has a stake of around 14 percent in the airline – but the WSF wants to sell its shares by October 2023 at the latest.
During the Corona crisis, Lufthansa negotiated a state rescue package worth a total of nine billion euros with the German government and the EU Commission – three billion euros as a loan from the state development bank KfW and six billion euros from the WSF. According to its own statements, the group took around 3.8 billion euros. This includes around 306 million euros with which the WSF built up its stake in the company. According to earlier information, the fund intends to sell the shares in five months at the earliest – but no later than October 2023.
The group had already redeemed a loan from the state development bank KfW in the amount of one billion euros early in February. In October he paid the WSF 1.5 billion euros, now another billion.
The repayments made possible above all “the increasing demand for air travel, the rapid restructuring and transformation” as well as “the trust of the capital markets in the company”, announced Lufthansa. The group has issued several bonds since November 2020, borrowing money from investors; In October, the airline also issued new shares and collected almost 2.2 billion euros.
Lufthansa boss Carsten Spohr said he would like to thank the federal government and the taxpayers on behalf of all employees. “In the worst financial crisis in our company’s history, they gave us prospects for the future. As a result, we were able to save more than 100,000 jobs.”