European aerospace and defence giant Airbus has entered into a share purchase agreement with Raiffeisenverband Salzburg to acquire its subsidiary Salzburg München Bank, opening up additional financing options for the company.
Financial details have not…
European aerospace and defence giant Airbus has entered into a share purchase agreement with Raiffeisenverband Salzburg to acquire its subsidiary Salzburg München Bank, opening up additional financing options for the company.
Financial details have not been disclosed.
Salzburg München Bank is a small fully-licensed bank based in Munich, Germany. It serves small and medium enterprises (SMEs) and private clients and has around €350m (US$479m) in assets.
On completion, it will be renamed Airbus Group Bank and gradually be developed to provide finance solutions to support the company’s businesses. Airbus noted, though, that the sale will not have any immediate effects on Salzburg München Bank’s existing clients or business.
Commenting on the deal, Airbus Group CFO Harald Wilhelm said: “Acquiring Salzburg München Bank provides us with a good platform to launch our company bank project. In the coming years the whole group can benefit through increased financing flexibility.”
According to one industry analyst, the move is in part a reaction to a number of large European investment banks having closed or substantially reduced their aircraft financing arms in recent years. Having its own bank enables Airbus to provide some of this vendor financing to its customers in-house.
A banking licence will also give it access to cheaper financing from the European Central Bank.
The acquisition is subject to obtaining regulatory approvals, namely the Ownership Control Procedure (Inhaberkontrollverordnung) from German regulator BaFin and also from BKartA, Germany’s competition authority.
Assuming these pass without issue, Airbus stated that hopes to close the deal as early as possible in 2014.
