The only two parties to submit proposals to buy Azores Airlines (S4, Ponta Delgada) have offered the same price, so the privatisation tender for the Azorean carrier has been suspended to give them time to present revised bids, the business newspaper Jornal de Negócios and Lusa News Agency reported.

Atlantic Consortium and Newtour Azores now have five days to alter the value of their proposals. Atlantic Consortium comprises the Portuguese carriers euroAtlantic Airways (YU, Lisbon) and White (WI, Lisbon), the Azores-based consultancy Old North Ventures, the Portuguese online travel agency Consolidador, and an entity called Vesuvius Wings.

New Tour Azores consists of the Portuguese travel group Newtour and the Austrian aircraft asset management firm MS Aviation (Vienna), which was acquired earlier this year by Angola’s Bestfly (Luanda 4 De Fevereiro).

Both consortia offered the same acquisition price per share of EUR6.50 euros (USD7.14). Atlantic said it would buy 750,000 shares for a total price of EUR4.875 million (USD5.36 million), while Newtour said it would buy 760,000 shares for EUR4.94 million (USD5.43 million).

According to the tender launched in March, the ownership structure of the international sister carrier of SATA Air Acores (SP, Ponta Delgada) is composed of a million shares, currently all held by Grupo SATA/SATA Holding, which is in turn controlled by the Portuguese autonomous region of the Azores. The process aims to sell between 51% and 85% of the capital. At the end of May, the initial June 20 deadline for bids was extended to July 31.

SATA Holding said in a statement on the Azores Airlines website on July 31 that “the two proposals coincided in the price presented, so taking into account the procedure foreseen in the tender specifications, the public act is suspended so that the competitors can improve the price per share presented, which should occur in the next five working days.”

Increasing the values ​​offered is not mandatory, but it would be a natural step to take for the competitors to stay in the race, according to Jornal de Negócios. If they opt not to raise the values, the other criteria will be taken into account to select the winner.