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After more than two years of fierce struggle, the airline SAS has now officially emerged from its bankruptcy protection.
This also welcomes the new ownership group consisting of the private equity firm Castlelake, the airline Air France-KLM, Lind Invest, and the Danish state.
This is stated in a press release on Wednesday morning.
– This marks a new beginning for SAS. The company is reborn as a competitive and financially robust company with a strengthened capital structure, according to the announcement.
The ownership group has decided to appoint a new board to be led by 63-year-old Kåre Schultz.
Until the end of 2022, the Dane Schultz was the CEO of Israeli Teva. He has previously served as deputy CEO at Novo Nordisk and CEO at Lundbeck.
“SAS has done a truly impressive job of navigating through the restructuring procedures and building a competitive company that is positioned for growth,” says Kåre Schultz.
He takes over from Carsten Dilling, who has been chairman since 2018.
Kåre Schultz has previously helped get a company on the right track. He did this among other things with Danish Lundbeck and later Teva.
The debt-ridden company applied for bankruptcy protection in the USA in mid-2022 and then began the so-called chapter 11 process.
This gave SAS peace of mind to focus on the recovery of the company without having to worry about creditors wanting their money back.
Both a court in the USA, the EU, and the Swedish legal system have since approved SAS’s recovery plan.
The new owners bring an investment of 1.2 billion dollars, equivalent to just over eight billion kroner.
Finance Minister Nicolai Wammen (S) is satisfied with the final result.
“I am pleased that a result has been achieved that meets the political agreement on SAS from June 2022,” he says on the ministry’s website.
In June 2022, the minister pledged that the Danish state wanted to continue as a co-owner of the company. But only if one or more private actors could also be found who wished to enter the venture.
SAS recently took one of the big steps towards concluding the process when the company was delisted from the stock exchange. This happened on August 13.
The company must now start looking forward, believes Jacob Pedersen, head of equity analysis at Sydbank.
“After the major rescue operation, SAS is in a significantly better place financially,” he says.
“The company has much less debt, much lower costs, and has received new money in the bank from the new ownership group.
Kåre Schultz’s first and biggest task will be to lay out a plan for how the company can grow,” assesses Jacob Pedersen.
“Now SAS has almost shrunk permanently over the past 20 years, but now we are likely to get an SAS that will be more eager to grow, according to him.