Heathrow airport investors including Quebec's Caisse de dépôt sell down their holdings
A handful of investors — including Spain’s Ferrovial SE and Canada’s Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec — have sold down their holdings in the company that controls London’s Heathrow Airport in a transaction valued at £3.3 billion.
The two buyers are French private equity firm Ardian, which picked up 22.6 per cent of Heathrow’s holding company FGP TopCo Ltd., and Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund, which took a 15 per cent stake in TopCo.
Ferrovial initially struck a deal in November 2023 to sell a 25 per cent stake to Ardian and Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund (PIF), but a handful of Heathrow’s institutional investors including Quebec’s Caisse de dépôt exercised tag-along rights to the sale. A revised agreement in June bumped up the sale to nearly 38 per cent of Heathrow’s holding company and saw those tag-along investors agree to sell into the transaction on a pro-rata basis.
“The transaction with Heathrow (was) made in connection with rebalancing our infrastructure portfolio, having been a long-term investor with nearly two decades of ownership,” said Caisse spokesperson Jean-Benoit Houde. “We will continue to hold a small stake (of) 2.7 per cent.”
The Caisse acquired a much larger stake in Heathrow in 2006 as part of a consortium of institutional investors that paid $24.7 billion for the world’s largest airport operator, BAA PLC. Since then, the Caisse has gradually sold down its position in the prized airport, but retained a 12 per cent stake valued at more than $1.5 billion as of last December.
In a statement in June, Ardian said the Heathrow sellers would retain shares representing 10 per cent of the issued share capital of TopCo, the holding company, in pro rata proportions, following completion of
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