SAS will be sold to another airline company as soon as the company is again profitable. The current crisis has convinced CEO Mats Jansson that SAS is not a sufficiently strong company on its own, DN Ekonomi wrote today.
Mats Jansson has earlier stated that SAS could manage on its own but he has apparently changed his mind.
»It is not a goal as such to be independent. Now I see a sale of SAS as the best solution for all parties,« Jansson said.
»The competition is hard, and there will be obvious advantages of entering into a major cooperation. The partnerships between Air France and KLM and between Lufthansa and Swissair show that it is possible to maintain a traffic programme and still increase the profitability. I am pleased that the owners of SAS now seem to be prepared to sell,« Jansson said.
Last autumn SAS was engaged in negotiatiaons with Lufthhansa, and rumour has it that it was Jansson himself who withdrew – which Jansson denies, « the Swedish newspaper Dagens Nyheter (DN) wrote.
»The preconditions were not good at the time. Lufthansa had its own problems, and it would have been risky to enter into a partnership during the crisis,« Jansson said.
He refuses to set a date for a reopening of the negotiations with Lufthansa. He estimates that SAS will become really interesting to potential purchasers in 2011 when he expects that the airline company will again be profitable.
Lufthansa is considered to be the most likely purchaser of SAS. Direkt/BNS
Mats Jansson has earlier stated that SAS could manage on its own but he has apparently changed his mind.
»It is not a goal as such to be independent. Now I see a sale of SAS as the best solution for all parties,« Jansson said.
»The competition is hard, and there will be obvious advantages of entering into a major cooperation. The partnerships between Air France and KLM and between Lufthansa and Swissair show that it is possible to maintain a traffic programme and still increase the profitability. I am pleased that the owners of SAS now seem to be prepared to sell,« Jansson said.
Last autumn SAS was engaged in negotiatiaons with Lufthhansa, and rumour has it that it was Jansson himself who withdrew – which Jansson denies, « the Swedish newspaper Dagens Nyheter (DN) wrote.
»The preconditions were not good at the time. Lufthansa had its own problems, and it would have been risky to enter into a partnership during the crisis,« Jansson said.
He refuses to set a date for a reopening of the negotiations with Lufthansa. He estimates that SAS will become really interesting to potential purchasers in 2011 when he expects that the airline company will again be profitable.
Lufthansa is considered to be the most likely purchaser of SAS. Direkt/BNS
