Etihad has received approval from the Australian federal government to boost its stake in Virgin Australia to 10%. This comes despite hard lobbying from Qantas against the move.
Etihad said in a statement today that it had won approval from the Foreign Investment Review Board to raise its holdings in Virgin from 5% to a maximum of 10%.
Shares in Virgin rose 1.25 cents to 39.25 cents immediately after Etihad confirmed that it had won approval. Qantas shares were up about 0.5% to just under 106 cents. Etihad said in a statement that the equity stake in Virgin would lead to "further revenue-generating opportunities".
The two airlines have had a strategic alliance since 2010, which now includes 24 flights a week between Australia and Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates.
Meanwhile: Japan's All Nippon Airways (ANA) yesterday set the price for its new $2 billion share offering. The airline announced it was selling 914 million new shares priced at 184 yen ($2.33) each, with the proceeds used to fund 787 deliveries. The price represents a discount of around 4% on today’s closing price on the Tokyo Stock Exchange.
ANA hopes the proceeds will total some 175,111 million yen which will be used for 787 delivery payments from March 2015.
In a market where the two main airlines, ANA and JAL are competing in an open market this offering will be seen as a good indicator for how the JAL IPO will perform in a few months. If the ANA sale bombs, then JAL will have to have a re-think. That is however unlikely.