Lonrho takes backseat in African airline deal, stock soars

Lonrho, the sub-Sahara focused investment company has sold off its airline division in an all-share deal worth 85.7m dollars.

The airline will be acquired by an outfit called Rubicon Diversified Investments and renamed Fastjet.

Rubicon has paid for the investment by issuing shares to Lonrho amounting to 73.7% of its total issued capital.

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The founder of Easyjet, Sir Stelios Haji-Ioannou, will also become a shareholder in the new venture and will assemble a specialist aviation team to run it, led by Ed Winter, formerly the Chief Executive of GO.

Lonrho says it will now become a passive shareholder, while the new management team turns Fastjet into a low cost scheduled passenger airline.

At 12:34, Lonrho shares were up 11.4%.

BS