Azul shareholders vote through TAP exit agreement

The shareholders of Brazilian airline Azul owned by mogul David Neeleman have voted in favour of an agreement which will see the company withdraw from Portuguese national airline TAP.

The vote was approved at an extraordinary meeting of the General Assembly on Monday. The information was advanced to ECO by a source at the company’s Department of Investor Relations that added that the measure had been approved by 99% of the votes.
There were two items for voting at the meeting, one for the “sale of the indirect participation held by the company in TAP” and the other for the “elimination of the rights of debt conversion in capital in the shareholding loan of €90 million of Azul granted to TAP in 2016”.
The agreement has already been approved by David Neeleman, but was awaiting the green light from Azul shareholders, an approval that has now been given according to the source.
It means that all the conditions are now in place for the Portuguese state’s holding in TAP to increase from the 50% it has now to 72.5% agreed in July as a result of David Neeleman’s departure from having a shareholding interest in the Portuguese airline.
Under the terms of the agreement, the Portuguese Government will pay Neeleman €55 million of which €10.6 million will go to Azul.
The Council of Ministers also approved the €1.2Bn loan to TAP which has been facing serious financial difficulties which have only been compounded by Covid-19.
In July, the Portuguese national carrier announced that it had withdrawn from the Government’s layoff scheme in favour of ‘extraordinary funding support for progressive recovery’ with reductions of working hours of between 20% and 70%.