Martin Ebner is smart. And experience. And tried and tested. Now he could become a big beneficiary of the upcoming rescue of the Swiss airline.
This is what the Tages-Anzeiger writes today. Ebner is the owner of Helvetic, a Swiss airline that until recently was up and running and has around 500 employees.
Ebner and his Helvetic have been flying higher and higher in recent years – like an icarus. The reason: you benefited from a close cooperation with Swiss.
The subsidiary of the large Lufthansa increasingly left its short-haul flights to Ebners Helvetic. In the industry this is called wet lease.
Swiss orders complete flights from Helvetic – with planes, pilots, accompanying staff, kerosene. All inclusive.
The partnership is cemented in a contract for years. That gives Ebner planning security. So he bought new aircraft for a lot of money.
The former banker, who set the pace on the Swiss stock markets with his BZ in the 1990s, made a bet. It read: The Swiss or the Lufthansa Group would never go under.
If so, then Ebner’s wetlease contract would also be worth nothing. It’s called counterparty risk. As long as my partner stands upright, nothing can happen to me.
However, if it falls, then I fall with it. With the de facto shutdown of flight operations in Zurich, Frankfurt, Munich and Vienna, Swiss and its mother Lufthansa are on the brink of extinction.
They will not survive without state aid from Berlin, Bern and Vienna.
According to media reports, such is now imminent. Mr. and Mrs. Swiss are saving Swiss. Zurich-Kloten Airport will not go under either.
And one who would otherwise have had hardly any chances gets away with it: Martin Ebner. As the Tagi writes, his contract remains unaffected by the offered hand from Bern.
This is in contrast to many other Lufthansa wetlease contracts. These were “canceled”, the newspaper writes with reference to Lufthansa.
And the newspaper continues today: “Helvetic was the exception. ‘The wetlease contract with Swiss was expanded and extended last year,’ writes a Helvetic spokesman. ”
Taxpayer saves billionaire. So the short formula. Ebner, once with a bow tie, today without a tie, would say: Bern guarantees Switzerland the connection to the world.
Once again, Ebner makes the curve in the greatest need. Twenty years ago, its holdings, including ABB, were worth around 30 billion.
The investor also traveled through the Swiss country. Put your money on stocks – so his message.
Then the crash came, the “small” shareholders suffered losses. And Ebner, the ex-banker, had to sell his vehicles called BK Vision and Pharma Vision in an emergency.
The ZKB was the big winner at the time.
Ebner did not go bankrupt. He was allowed to keep some investments, including those in a Liechtenstein bank.
With this remaining stock of his former billion-dollar empire, the investor with his residence and office at Lake Zurich in the tax-favorable canton of Schwyz got up again.
Today Ebner is again one of the people made. With an end for his Helvetic it would have “caught” him a second time after 2002. Apparently that’s not happening – thanks to Switzerland.
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