Ryanair buys 3.5m Aer Lingus shares and raises stake to 29.82%

RYANAIR has increased to 29.82% its shareholding in Aer Lingus.

The budget airline, which had a 29.4% slice of the former national carrier, announced yesterday that it had acquired 3,500,000 ordinary shares of nominal value, 0.05 each, in the Aer Lingus Group.

This brings the holding of Ryanair in Aer Lingus to 159,231,025 ordinary shares representing 29.82% of the issued share capital.

A European Court, on March 19 last, refused to block Irish low-cost airline Ryanair from using its voting rights in rival Aer Lingus and ruled that Aer Lingus’ argument that Ryanair’s then acquisition of 29.4% of its shares represented an illegal takeover could not be considered as valid.

The two companies had been dog-fighting since 2006, when the Government decided to privatise the formerly State-owned company.

On October 23 of that year, Ryanair launched a bid to buy the entire company. However, on June 27, 2007, the European Commission decided that the takeover would break EU competition rules, and banned it.