Ownership
Bristol International Airport is 100% owned by South West Airports Limited (SWAL), a joint venture holding company owned by Bristol Airport (Bermuda) Limited (BABL) and Macquarie European Infrastructure Fund (MEIF). BABL is 71% owned by Macquarie Airports, a fund listed on the Sydney Stock Exchange, and 29% owned by Ontario Teachers Pension Plan, a major infrastructure investor. Both BABL and MEIF are managed by Macquarie Capital Funds (Europe) Limited (MCFEL), a subsidiary of Macquarie Group Limited. - BRS official website.
In recent months there have been suggestions that the airport, or a major stake in it, may be sold.
It will be seen that ownership is somewhat complex and a change is now in the offing.
The Australian Macquarie Group has had to write down the value of its listed funds including Macquarie Airports (MAp) and has decided to forego future management and performance fees from MAp in return for A$345 million worth of shares in MAp. MAp has generated hundreds of millions of dollars for Macquarie down the years but the write-down means the bank has decided to change its approach. The change will result in Macquarie increasing its stake in MAp from 21% to 27.3%
In future MAp will manage itself, with Macquarie adopting an advisory role.
There are doubts in the financial press that this move will improve the value and stability of MAp going forward.
It still appears that MAp may decide to divest itself of some of its assets so the ownership of BRS could change at some point in the forseeable future.
Ryanair Base
Ryanair increased the number of based aircraft at BRS from two to four at the beginning of this month.
I've compared the schedule for this July with July 2008 and discovered that the one hundred per cent increase in based aircraft has only resulted in an increase of just over 40% more weekly rotations.
In July 2008 there were 81 weekly rotations and this July there are 114.
The reason is that daily routes such as Girona, Shannon and one Dublin rotation are now operated by BRS-based aircraft and the fourth daily DUB rotation that used to operate on some days of the week using DUB-based aircraft has been axed, although one of the two daily BHD rotations is operated by a non-BRS based aircraft from Mon to Fri.
According to a comment from a Ryanair spokeswoman in the local evening newspaper at the time of the launch of the expanded base the full winter programme from BRS will be announced in September.