David Neeleman says his TAP takeover vehicle Gateway so far has paid €80 million to suppliers and paid off €100 million of the airline’s debt.
"Without capital, the company could not do anything," said the American part-owner of TAP.
In an interview on TVI, Neeleman tried to justify the 11th hour haste of the privatisation, "We had to do everything very quickly, because TAP had no money for salaries and owed €80 million to suppliers."
Few believe this story, or if true, the company is suspected of engineering its own convenient cash-flow crisis to give the government an excuse to sell the airline before the Socialist Party was put into to government by the president.
The current government has pledged to renationalise TAP, or at least get back a controlling stake in the airline, a position that Neeleman naturally disagrees with.
Neeleman was keen to highlight that since Gateway has had as controlling 61% stake in TAP for over a month, Gateway already has injected €180 million into the company, with a further €120 million to come in January, "We have done more in recent weeks than was done in the last 15 years. Without capital, the company could not do anything. "
"TAP had no money, the government could not put money in the company. All banks have agreed to work with us because they know that privatisation was essential to get new capital into the company," Neeleman added.
The businessman was interviewed after the Socialist Minister of Planning and Infrastructure had informed the new shareholders (David Neeleman and Humberto Pedrosa who own Gateway) that it is the government’s intention to reverse the privatization of TAP, reducing the private shareholding of Gateway to 49%.
Neeleman said he understood the concern of the Government because TAP is a company "generating more than €2 billion of income for the Portuguese economy" and because it "13,000 families depend on it," but made clear that Gateway does not have "any interest in having a company that State owned, this contract would be different from the one we signed."
