Interest strong ahead of Edinburgh Airport sale launch

Information memoranda will be sent next week (Tuesday 17 January) to those parties that have expressed an interest in bidding for Scotland’s Edinburgh Airport, a spokesperson for the airport confirmed. 

Although the sale process has yet to officially get underway, a long list of potential bidders has already been named in media reports. Infrastructure Investor received confirmation last November that a consortium led by Scottish merchant bank Noble Grossart and including US alternative asset manager Carlyle Group was planning to bid.

At around the same time, the Financial Times reported that a consortium was also being put together by Ben Thomson, chairman of Scottish investment bank Inverleith Capital, who was thought to be working with Richard Jeffrey, a former managing director of Edinburgh Airport. 

Since then, a host of other names have been put in the frame. Last week Reuters said US-based Global Infrastructure Partners (GIP), which achieved a first close of $3 billion on its second infrastructure fund toward the end of last year, had appointed RBS to advise it on a bid. GIP already has London’s Gatwick Airport in its portfolio. 

Other potential bidders cited by Reuters included a 3i/M&G/Universities Superannuation Scheme consortium; Frankfurt Airport owner Fraport; Turkish airport operator TAV; Charles de Gaulle Airport owner Aeroports de Paris; Canadian investment group Borealis Infrastructure; and YVRAS, the operator of Canada’s Vancouver Airport. 

London-based infrastructure fund manager Arcus Infrastructure Partners was also named as a “possible” bidder along with Manchester Airport Group and Peel Holdings, a real estate, transport and infrastructure investor. 

Meanwhile, a report from Bloomberg earlier this week linked South Korea’s Incheon International Airport Corp to a possible offer, as well as investment bank JPMorgan Chase & Company. 

BAA, the UK airports operator owned by Spanish infrastructure group Ferrovial, said last October that it would seek to sell Edinburgh Airport after a UK Competition Commission ruling forcing it to sell one of its Scottish airports plus London’s Stansted Airport. 

The sale is expected to fetch somewhere in the range of £400 million (€481 million; $618 million) and £600 million. Edinburgh Airport has been seeing passenger numbers grow rapidly, and is currently the sixth-busiest airport in the UK on this measure.