Rampdog: New Zealand's National Party Government obviously sees some value in having an interest in their national carrier. Nice fleet and tax payers money well spent on promoting it
Shares on Issue - About Air New Zealand - Company Information - Air New Zealand - United States Site
This what they did way back -
BBC News | BUSINESS | Air New Zealand renationalised
Heaven forbid, could even be used as a model for other countries' struggling airlines .
Rampdog
A couple of points. The airline wasn't nationalised, there were still other shareholders. The then Labour government stepped in and bought a majority shareholding following the 9/11 catastrophe and the Ansett debacle.
Since then the successive governments have received substantial dividends and recouped a significant portion of the original investment when they sold down their shareholding at a greatly increased share price over what they paid for the shares to start with.
While taxpayers money was used in the original shareholding purchase there has been no taxpayer money spent since. Anything the airline does is done with money it earns. In fact taxpayers have done very well out of the deal. Air New Zealand operates like any other public company.
I do agree other governments could use this as a model.