They haven't written it down to nothing, its clearly still worth ~€150 million at current share prices, but they have conceded they'll never get their money back. While they won't get offered anything close to what they paid for their stake, they'd be stupid not to try maximise the value from any sale of their 29% stake.
Indeed, but how are they valued on the balance sheet? If Racedo is correct and they have been written down to a nominal value, then any sale would be a net benefit in the accounts as of now. It is the government who need to / are being forced to sell.
That would effect Ryanair as well though, who will want to recover as much of their investment as possible, so I can't see them selling at the same time as the government.
FR can make the government's position on this easier by selling or harder by not doing so. Review of DAA fees, maybe?
There was more to it than that. The disaster of eircom's privatisation was still fresh in peoples' memory, so this 25% stake was the government's attempt to reassure the public, who were quite skeptical that an Aer Lingus IPO may go the same way.
Eircom flotation was 1999 in very different circumstances; I'm not sure this overly influenced things seven years later. The government did not want a strike to damage the sell off - retaining a stake was the quid pro quo. The prime motivation was parish-pump political.
MD