Africa to Get Discount Airline on Lonrho-Stelios Tie-Up - Bloomberg

[PaperMan]

Africa to Get Discount Airline on Lonrho-Stelios Tie-Up - Bloomberg

Africa will get a discount airline
operating flights continentwide after industrial group J" density="sparse" title="Get Quote" ticker="LAFJ" class="web_ticker">Lonrho
Plc (LAF) recruited EasyJet Plc (EZJ) founder Stelios Haji-Ioannou to help
transform its aviation assets into a low-cost carrier.

Lonrho’s Fly540 unit will be used to establish the Fastjet
brand, with services starting in Ghana this year and extending
to East Africa and Angola. Rubicon Diversified Investments Plc (RUBI)
will facilitate the move via a reverse takeover, the companies
said today.

Stelios, who goes by his first name, will join the Rubicon
board and get 5 percent of its stock and 0.5 percent of annual
sales for providing consulting services and use of the Fastjet
name, which he owns. Ed Winter, a former EasyJet executive who
becomes Rubicon’s chief, said consumer-spending expansion makes
Africa ready to support a discount carrier of the kind that has
transformed short-haul flying in the U.S., Europe and Asia.

“The African aviation market is significantly under-served
and there are massive opportunities for growth,” Winter, who
has also worked at British Airways, said in a telephone
interview. Fastjet will be a “low-cost, point-to-point, no-
frills, all-jet airline operating to European standards of
safety and quality.”

Under the plan, Rubicon will buy Fly540’s holding company
in an all-stock deal valuing the Lonrho division at $85.7
million. The reverse takeover will give Lonrho 73.7 percent of
shares in Rubicon, a former software company listed on London’s
Alternative Investment Market.

Extra Jets

Lonrho’s aviation unit began


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