Adani Group makes offer to buyout 23.5% stake in Mumbai airport as South African partners in JV keen to exit

The Adani Group has reportedly made an offer to buyout 23.5 percent stake of two South African firms in the Mumbai International Airport Ltd (MIAL) at a valuation of Rs 9,500 crore, a media report said.

MIAL is a joint venture between Hyderabad-headquartered GVK, Airports Authority of India (AAI) and two South African firms Bidvest and Airports Company South Africa (ACSA).

GVK Airport Developers is the largest shareholder in MIAL with 50.5 percent stake. Bidvest holds 13.5 percent, ACSA owns 10 percent and the rest is with AAI.

According to The Economic Times, since both South African firms are keen on exiting the venture, the cash-strapped GVK now has to hurry and get funds to keep Adani Group from taking a big pie of MIAL.

A file image of the Mumbai international airport. PTI

“The GVK group will match the offer and buy the 23.5 percent stake in the company. We will not let the stake in the company go to anyone else,” a source close to the development was quoted as saying by the newspaper.

In October last year, Mint reported that German airport operator AviAlliance, Australia’s AMP Capital and US-based Global Infrastructure Partners (GIP) had submitted non-binding bids to buy a minority stake in MIAL.

Meanwhile, Adani Group has also bid to operate six non-metro airports that are currently under AAI's management.

As part of an open international competitive bidding process, the Airports Authority of India (AAI) had sought bidders for carrying out operations, management and development of the six airports—Guwahati, Thiruvananthapuram, Lucknow, Mangaluru, Ahmedabad and Jaipur.

Apart from Adani Group, private sector airport operator GMR Group also submitted bids for all six airports.

The last date to submit technical bids was 14 February.

AAI will open the financial bids on 25 February. The winning bids will be announced on 28 February.

In November last year, the government had cleared a proposal for managing six AAI-run airports o public-private partnership (PPP) basis.

--With PTI inputs