TAP mortgaged headquarters to finance loans
Portugal’s national airline TAP had to mortgage 29 buildings that comprised its headquarters at Lisbon airport to get a loan of €75 million.
The financial operation from 2016 was made through an unnamed Portuguese financial institution of which the most likely candidates could be Caixa Geral de Depósitos or Montepio banks.
The mortgage was still in force in 2018 according to the company’s financial accounts. In addition to mortgaging its headquarters, the airline sold a ‘credit package’ in order to improve its cash-flow.
“To ensure the payment of amounts due on the back of a mutual contract with a national institution to the value of €75 million, a mortgage was taken out on an urban property belonging to the group comprising 29 buildings — offices and workshops for buildings and materials and others at the Lisbon airport site” states the document regarding last year’s accounts and repeating information that also appeared in the accounts for 2017 and 2016.
In question are buildings on land that the new TAP shareholder had wanted to sell as soon as it would have bought a share of the airline company in November 2015 in a deal that ultimately fell through.
In 2014 the Government land and property company Parpública had the land valued €146 million. In questions put by ECO, the Portuguese online news outlet to TAP and the Portuguese Government which has a significant share in TAP and had a controlling share at the time the loan was taken out in 2016, no answers had been received as to which institution had lent the money and for how long the mortgage was or is intended.