Holiday Autos Owner Accelerates £150m Sale

The owner of the Holiday Autos car rental brand is close to hiring bankers to oversee a sale that could value the business at more than £150m.

Sky News understands that ECI Partners, the private equity group which owns a controlling stake in CarTrawler, a Dublin-based provider of online car rental distribution systems, is on the verge of appointing PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) to advise on an auction which is expected to get underway by the end of the year.

The development comes weeks after it emerged that ECI was plotting a sale of the business just two years after it bought CarTrawler for about £80m.

That deal earned multimillion pound windfalls for Greg and Niall Turley, the brothers who founded the business and oversaw its expansion into more than 170 countries.

Such a rapid change of ownership is not unusual in the private equity industry, although it is possible that ECI will decide against a sale if prospective buyers fail to meet its valuation expectations. PwC also advised ECI on its acquisition of the company.

CarTrawler announced the acquisition of the online assets of Holiday Assets earlier this summer, buying them from Travelocity Global, the immediate parent company of Lastminute.com, the online leisure bookings company.

That deal reunited ECI with Holiday Autos, which it had owned for several years before selling to Lastminute while it was a publicly-listed company in London in 2003.

CarTrawler, which has become a popular platform for companies to rent cars online, has annual bookings of around 5m vehicles, and sales of more than £425m.

ECI declined to comment.

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BA Owner IAG In £442m Loss

Losses have deepened for IAG, the owner of airlines BA and Iberia, as it reports a half-year pre tax loss of 506m euros (£442m) in the six months to June.

The company says the loss is down to exceptional one-off items, as a result of restructuring at Iberia, which left IAG with a bill of more than 250m euros (£218m).

However the airline group saw passenger revenue rise by 4% to 7.498bn euros, with total revenue up 2.1% to 8.707bn euros compared to last year.

IAG said the operating loss for the half-year was 33m euros before exceptional items were added.

Chief executive Willie Walsh told Sky News: "All the exceptional items were in the first quarter and they related to restructuring at Iberia.

"The second quarter results were actually very impressive, where we reported an operating profit of 245m euro, up from the 4m euro loss last year."

The company has been implementing a significant restructuring on Iberia, which has resulted in industrial action and major job cuts.

Mr Walsh said: "The restructuring plan is proving to be effective, but there's still a long way to go.

"To date, about 1,700 people have left Iberia, by the end of the year that will have increased to about 2,400 and there will be more next year."

He added: "I'm pleased with the way the restructuring programme is progressing."

BA's performance in the group further strengthened, with operating profit at 247m euros in the period, compared to 94m euros in 2012.

The airline boss explained: "The London market and transatlantic traffic remains strong, legacy costs from the BMI integration have ended and the airline remains focused on cost control."

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BA Owner IAG In £442m Loss

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10:35am UK, Friday 02 August 2013 Video: IAG Boss: Pleased with Restructuring

Enlarge Losses have deepened for IAG, the owner of airlines BA and Iberia, as it reports a half-year pre tax loss of 506m euros (£442m) in the six months to June.

The company says the loss is down to exceptional one-off items, as a result of restructuring at Iberia, which left IAG with a bill of more than 250m euros (£218m).

However the airline group saw passenger revenue rise by 4% to 7.498bn euros, with total revenue up 2.1% to 8.707bn euros compared to last year.

IAG said the operating loss for the half-year was 33m euros before exceptional items were added.

Chief executive Willie Walsh told Sky News: "All the exceptional items were in the first quarter and they related to restructuring at Iberia.

"The second quarter results were actually very impressive, where we reported an operating profit of 245m euro, up from the 4m euro loss last year."

The company has been implementing a significant restructuring on Iberia, which has resulted in industrial action and major job cuts.

Mr Walsh said: "The restructuring plan is proving to be effective, but there's still a long way to go.

"To date, about 1,700 people have left Iberia, by the end of the year that will have increased to about 2,400 and there will be more next year."

He added: "I'm pleased with the way the restructuring programme is progressing."

BA's performance in the group further strengthened, with operating profit at 247m euros in the period, compared to 94m euros in 2012.

The airline boss explained: "The London market and transatlantic traffic remains strong, legacy costs from the BMI integration have ended and the airline remains focused on cost control."

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IAG Boss: Pleased with Restructure

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