The Lufthansa Group has agreed to sell corporate payment
provider AirPlus to Stockholm-based SEB Kort Bank AB, the company announced.
The approximately €450 million sale, which includes AirPlus
and all its international subsidiaries and branches, is expected to close in
the first half of 2024, subject to regulatory approval. AirPlus will remain a
member of the UATP network following the sale.
We are going from a Nordic provider in this business area to a European provider.”
SEB Kort’s Söderberg
Lufthansa already had made clear its
intentions to divest AirPlus, and the agreement with SEB Kort “is the
next major step in the Lufthansa Group strategy to focus on its core business
going forward,” Lufthansa CFO Remco Steenbergen said in a statement. Its
sale of its catering business LSG Group to private equity group Aurelius,
announced in April, was another part of that strategy, along with its agreement
to
acquire a 41 percent stake in Italian national carrier ITA Airways.
“AirPlus is perfectly positioned in the market and, as
a part of a larger financial group, will be able to realize its potential
better than in the Lufthansa Group,” according to Steenbergen. “In
turn, it enables us to focus even more on further improving the profitability
and capital returns of the Lufthansa Group core business.”
For SEB Kort, the acquisition is a path to “creating a
European leader in the corporate payment solutions market,” Jonas
Söderberg, head of the bank’s corporate and private customer division, said in
an investor call announcing the agreement on Wednesday. Combining its own
commercial card offering with AirPlus’ commercial account business “will
create a unique value proposition for us,” and it also expands the bank’s
geographic footprint for corporate business, he said. SEB Kort counts about
half of the companies on the OMX Nordic 40 stock index as customers, while
AirPlus operates mainly outside of the Nordic markets in Europe.
“We are going from a Nordic provider in this business
area to a European provider,” Söderberg said.
In addition, the acquisition provides a “technological
leap” for SEB Kort, as AirPlus has invested heavily in its IT platform in
recent years. SEB Kort plans to “use AirPlus’ modern, cloud-based platform
for corporate accounts,” SEB Kort CFO Masih Yazdi said in the call.
SEB Kort reports about 600 employees and had about 2.2
billion Swedish kronor ($206.3 million) of total income in 2022. AirPlus, which
has about 1,100 employees and a corporate customer base of about 53,000, reported
about €231 million in total revenues last year.
