it now wonders on investment and developement plans for the airport now.
It has been in the public domain for several months that Macquarie Airports was anxious to sell some of its assets to improve shareholder value with speculation that BRS would be on the sale sheet.
The airport is owned by South West Airports Limited which is a joint venture holding company owned jointly by Macquarie European Infrastructure Fund and Bristol Airport (Bermuda) Limited (BABL)
71% of BABL was previously owned by Macquarie Airports with the remaining 29% owned by Ontario Teachers Pension Plan.
Today's news means that the Ontario Teachers Pension Plan now owns 50% of the airport with Macquarie European Infrastructure Fund (a different branch of the Macquarie empire) the other 50%.
It's back to a similar situation that obtained before the Spanish Ferrovial Group bought BAA. Ferrovial, through its subsidiary Cintra, owned half the airport with Macquarie owning the other half. Ferrovial disposed of its half to avoid competition issues when it purchased BAA.
The Ontario Teachers Pension Plan is Canada's largest single professional pension plan with £50 billion of assets.
BRS's CEO Robert Sinclair said that Teachers, '…..........is fully supportive of the strategic direction of the business. It is committed to the long term development of the airport and the recent planning application in particular'.
So it looks as though the expansion plans are still on track. Just needs the planning authority to approve them – if that was only so simple.