Aperture apt to buy new TAP bonds

Aperture, the assets management company of Generali Investments, is likely to buy fresh bonds issued by Portuguese airline TAP.

In an interview with the newspaper Negócios, Simon Thorp, the chef investment officer at Aperture said that TAP’s debts had been a “good investment” for the asset management company.
Now it is ready to buy a fresh bond issue, which TAP is planning, as soon as it gets onto the market.
TAP, which has all but been nationalised, joins bank Novobanco as the two most controversial Portuguese companies in recent years thanks to a string of management blunders, scandals, public inquires and tax payer bailouts that have done little to improve Portugal’s standing overseas with investors and ratings agencies.
Nevertheless, US vulture fund Lone Star has been making a handsome profit from Novobanco, and Aperture has made money off the back of TAP in bond yields.
Aperture started buying TAP bonds even before its restructuring plan on the hunch that the Portuguese State would bailout the airline which currently, judging from Portuguese media reports, looks like it is being run by Ronald McDonald and the entire cast of Airplane.
According to Simon Thorpe, TAP continues to be an attractive proposition and is the only investment that Aperture currently has in Portugal.
“If they advance with a fresh bond issue this year — presuming they will be at an attractive price — we’ll definitely be on board”, he told the newspaper.
“We’re interested if they pay us back the money we’ll invest since we are not looking for capital gains but rather yields, and even though businesses like TAP have gone through difficult times, in the world of private debt this is considered a good thing because it puts the company’s balance in a more favourable position”, he said.