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LISBON (Reuters) – Lufthansa Chief Executive Carsten Spohr will meet Portugal’s centre-right government on Monday to formalise his company’s interest in privatising state-owned carrier TAP, according to three sources familiar with the matter.
One of the sources said Lufthansa was considering a 19.9% stake in TAP, just below the 20% threshold that would require approval from the European competition watchdog.
The Portuguese government and Lufthansa both declined to comment.
The meeting between Carsten Spohr and the two heads of TAP Air Portugal, Finance Minister Joaquim Miranda Sarmento and Infrastructure Minister Miguel Pinto Luz, was requested by Lufthansa, a second source said.
The meeting, to be held on Monday morning, comes as Portugal seeks to advance the privatisation of the airline, which is wholly owned by the government, by the end of the year, a third source said.
The source said that although the sale process is still at a very early stage, the government intends to speed it up as there are indications that there is interest from potential buyers.
According to the first source, Lufthansa believes the government might prefer it as a buyer because the company would preserve TAP’s autonomy, but the formal process has not yet started.
Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera reported on Sunday that Lufthansa was interested in a 19.9 percent stake.
At least two other major players in the sector, IAG, owner of British Airways, and Air France-KLM, have already expressed interest in TAP, whose main assets are its strategic slots to Brazil, Portuguese-speaking African countries and the United States from its Lisbon hub.
(Reporting Sergio Goncalves, Joanna Plucinska and Ilona Wissenbach; French version Elena Smirnova, edited by Augustin Turpin)
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