A month and a half ago, reports surfaced that Air Belgium was urgently seeking 10 million euros to reach the end of the year. The 19 million euros that aviation veteran Niky Terzakis raised in March from his main Chinese shareholder Hongyuan had run out.
According to information from the Belgian newspaper, most of the money comes from new loans from shareholders of Hongyuan (6.5 million euros) and Sabena Aerospace Engineering (0.5 million). Sabena Aerospace also has Air Belgium as an aircraft maintenance customer.
Public shareholders also contribute. However, there is no government money involved. Their contribution is mainly through the extension from 2023 to 2025 of the repayment term of their convertible bond loan to the company.
The Hongyuan logistics group has a number of warehouses at Liège and Charleroi airports and is the largest shareholder of Air Belgium with 49% of the shares, followed by the Walloon public investment companies Sogepa and SRIW (together 35%) and the federal company of FPIM private equity (10 %). Sabena Aerospace is also part of the capital, just like Terzakis.
Financial situation
The Belgian airline has made a profit for one year (in 2019) in its seven years of existence. Around 47 million euros have gone up in smoke since 2016.
The rumor that Air Belgium was about to collapse was quickly dismissed by Terzakis. He indicated that the ten million euros were not for survival, but purely for in-depth investments. Furthermore, he said that while Air Belgium faces “financial challenges”, he knows of no airline that doesn’t, with the exception of Ryanair. Terzakis even plans to open new passenger routes.
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