This copyrighted story from ATI below should help. If anyone can shed light on exactly why Ryanair dropped Servisair at STN I'd appreciate it online or offline. Uncharacteristic silence from all concerned at present.
Menzies/GlobeGround disentangle UK handling ops. .Kieran Daly, London (08Jan02, 10:05 GMT, 271 words)
. .UK ground handler Menzies Aviation Group (MAG) has sealed two deals with Penauille Polyservices-controlled GlobeGround that tidy up a complex situation left by the flurry of ownership changes in the industry over the past 18 months.
Under the terms of a deal announced this morning, MAG will buy out GlobeGround’s 20% shareholding in the Menzies World Cargo, bringing that unit entirely under its own control; and it will sell to GlobeGround its 49% holding in the GlobeGround (UK) passenger operation, handing that business to GlobeGround.
The cargo transaction is for £5.1 million and the passenger deal for £5.8 million.
Some sort of rationalisation has been on the cards ever since Lufthansa agreed in May last year to sell GlobeGround to Penauille of France, which had earlier acquired UK ground-handler Servisair. That sale is structured in two parts for tax reasons, 51% of the company having been transferred already and the remainder scheduled to be handed over in June this year.
Menzies and GlobeGround, when it was under Lufthansa control, had formed an 80:20 joint venture a year earlier to provide cargo handling in the UK under the Menzies World Cargo banner - a relationship which made little sense once GlobeGround came under the control of Menzies’ arch-rival Penauille.
Their passenger operations were controlled in a 49:51% overall joint venture called GlobeGround UK which raised similar issues once the Penauille deal went through.
The main cargo operation affected is MAG’s London Heathrow handling operation, but the company has smaller outstations at several UK airports.
For Penauille, the deal cements its position as one of the world’s leading ground-handlers following the Servisair acquisition.
. .Source: Air Transport Intelligence news