ISSN: 2560-1601 Vol. 21, No. 2 (SI) Sept 2019 Slovenia economy briefing: Critical situation in Adria Airways Helena Motoh 1052 Budapest Petőfi Sándor utca 11. +36 1 5858 690 Kiadó: Kína-KKE Intézet Nonprofit Kft. [email protected] Szerkesztésért felelős személy: Chen Xin Kiadásért felelős személy: Huang Ping china-cee.eu 2017/01 Critical situation in Adria Airways Summary Adria Airways, the only Slovenia-based airline company is going through a serious crisis. After it was sold to a German fund 4K Invest in 2016, the poor management and a series of dubious business decisions brought Adria Airways to the verge of bankruptcy. At the moment they stopped operating on all flights except for one daily flight to and from Frankfurt and it had most of its fleet confiscated due to unpaid rent fees. If negotiations to secure some additional funding are not successful before the next week, the company will lose the licence by the decree of the Civil Aviation Agency and will have to declare bankruptcy. Background: History of the company The company was established in March 1961 as Adria Aviopromet and bought four used DC 6B airplanes from the Dutch KLM. First flight was made with hired Dutch crew in August 1961, while the first local crew was used in December the same year. It took Adria Aviopromet 3 years to actually be able to start flying from Ljubljana airport, which was only built in 1964, before that it was using the Zagreb Airport Pleso. In the following years, it started serving the needs of growing incoming tourism, especially from Germany, Netherlands and Great Britain. In 1968 it joined with Interexport company and was renamed to Inex Adria Aviopromet. First jet aircraft (DC 9-30) was bought in 1969. Growing steadily through the 1970s and became an important charter airline with several regular lines within Yugoslavia. New aircrafts were added to the fleet in the 1980s (MD-80, Dash-7, Airbus A320) and regular international lines started to be operated within Europe in 1986 Adria leaves the Inex system and is renamed as Adria Airways. After the independence in June 1991, Adria was banned from flying for three months and only fully restarted the operation in January 1992. With the loss of the Yugoslav market during the military conflicts in the former Yugoslavia, the company had to find new strategies. In 1990s the ownership structure of Adria Airways was changed and the company became a joint-stock company. The structure of its operation also changed and Adria Airways became primarily a regular lines operator. In 1996 it joined the code-share system with Lufthansa. It built a reputation of reliable and safe company, obtaining IATA's IOSA safety certificate in 2004. The same year Adria Airways became a member of the global airline association Star Alliance and a full member in 2010. 1 The sale of Adria Airways In the beginning of 2016, Adria Airways, previously listed as one of the state-owned companies to be privatized, was sold to the German investment fund 4K Invest. Despite some critical voices against selling the main national air carrier to a speculative capital fund, the general position of the government was that 4K invest is a suitable buyer, especially due to the connections it had in the transport industry. 4K Invest bought Adria Airways through it company established solely for this purpose, namely, the AA International Aviation Holding. The contract with Slovenian Sovereign Holding was signed by (and guarantees were made by) another company, 4K KNDNS, later liquidated. At present, Adria Airways is officially owned by two owners. 54.3 % is owned by a German citizen Stefan Beulertz, resident of Malta. 45.7 % is owned by the AA International Aviation Holding company, established in 2016 by the 4K Invest fund solely for the purpose of buying Adria Airways. This company only has 25,000 Euros capital. Stefan Beulertz is closely connected to 4K Invest, since until 2016 he was the owner of Lanterne Holdings Limited, who was until then the owner of 4K Invest and then sold its share to an unknown buyer. It is speculated that the new owner of K4 Invest might be Igor Toninelli, the owner of the 4K Invest International Limited which in turn is the owner of 4K Invest International, a company that Adria Airways paid considerable amounts (4 million Euros) for supposed consultancy services. The portfolio of 4K Invest shows four major bankruptcies in the last ten years: German media company DAPD, German electronic manufacturer Flextronics, Finnish furniture seller Antilla and Swiss airline Darwin Airline. The last one is especially problematically connected to the 4K Invest actions in Slovenia, since Adria Airways bought the majority of Darwin Airline just before the latter declared bankruptcy. In addition, a financial transaction of 1.6 million Euros out of Darwin Airline, allegedly used to improve the financial viability of Adria Airways, was in reality transferred to the company STBE, registered in Ljubljana and owned by the previously mentioned Stefan Beulertz, a case that is currently under investigation in Switzerland. Worsening situation in Adria Airways In the three years after the sale it also became clear that the new owner is making flawed business decisions, which combined, caused the grave financial status of the company today. Some of the problems started already in 2014, when Adria was still state owned. The fleet was sold off and then the same aircrafts were leased back, showing a fictional profit for the year 2 2014, what already was seen as a serious irregularity in 2015 financial revision. After the sale, the new owners started prioritizing the high-profit ACMI leasing – leasing out the complete aircraft, crew, maintenance and insurance packages to other airlines. With the limited crew and aircrafts this meant that less were available for regular flight connections, and the situation was made additionally worse by adding new services, e. g. point-to-point flights. An additional decision in this direction was to rent a number of Russian Suhoj airplanes to free the Airbuses and Canadairs for leasing them out. Eventually the situation worsened to the point that they started regularly overbooking flights, joining several flights, and operating them with the same aircraft and crew, causing great delays and many problems for the passengers on connecting flights. Situation progressively worsened since summer 2018. Since first signs of coming problems, the owner 4K Invest started to cut the obligation ties with Adria Airways in case of a potential bankruptcy, one of the first measures was to declare bankruptcy of the 4K KNDNS, which also provided guarantees for Adria Airways’ debts. It also stopped being responsive to the national agencies and failed to hand in the required sanation plan for the company. On September 19th, first two planes (Bombardier CRJ900) were confiscated due to unpaid fees to the leasing company. An additional one plane was allegedly also confiscated, seriously limiting the number of operable planes, since a number of aircrafts and crews is being on lease to other airline companies. Finally the management of the company, led by Holger Kowarsch, officialy declared Adria Airways insolvent and required an additional investment of minimum 50 million euros from the German fund 4K Invest. According to several experts, this might mean that the owner fund ran out of the different manoeuvres, which served fro the 4K Invest to be able to prolong this situation for the last two years. Instead of finding the required resources, however, the owners demanded of the state to provide support with an ultimatum, scheduled for Monday 23rd, to cease all flights if no new money is given by the state. The response of the political circles was quite stern. Both Prime Minister Marjan Šarec and Minister for Economic Development and Technology Zdravko POčivalšek were explicit on the impossibility of a state support for a privately owned company. In response to the failed ultimatum, 4K Invest grounded all airplanes and stopped operating all flight except for 1 daily flight to and from Frankfurt. Alternative scenarios were proposed by the state representatives how to solve the situation and try to keep the national-based airline. All of those solutions, however, require the withdrawal of the 4K Fund from the ownership of Adria Airways. 3 Conclusions After several years of worsening situation in Adria Airways, the poor management and and potential corrupt practices brought the company to a very critical point. Despite the ultimatum and demands for state financial support, the representaitves of the state refuse to enable that before the fund redraws from the ownership. In the next few days, we can expect a solution to this situation, which now seems most likely to be bankruptcy of the company with perhaps a new state owned airline being established from the remaining assets and personnel. 4 .