At the nearest meeting of the Coalition Cooperation Council the Union of Greens and Farmers (ZZS) intends to ask Minister of Transport Kaspars Briškens to provide detailed information about Latvia’s national airBaltic airline’s actual financial situation, as confirmed by the party.
ZZS wants to hear an explanation as to the prospects of implementing the initial public offering (IPO) of the company’s shares and efforts to attract a strategic investor for the airline.
The party will also ask the minister to explain the recent publicly reported information about the pledging of airBaltic’s assets.
After looking through the information available from mass media, ZZS invites Briškens to explain the situation with airBaltic’s assets.
The Latvian airline has recently registered a commercial pledge with a maximum secured claim of EUR 442 million, according to information from Lursoft.
The commercial pledgee is British-based “U.S. Bank Trustees Limited”. airBaltic has pledged the claim rights, as well as 36 trademarks, including airBaltic, airBaltic Club, airBaltic Cargo and others.
Currently the airline has four active commercial pledges. All of them were registered in May 2024, the pledgee is “U.S. Bank Trustees Limited”.
AirBaltic Public Relations Officer Augusts Zilberts explained to LETA that on the 14th of May 2024 the airline issued covered bonds worth EUR 340 million. The transaction provides that the bonds are secured in accordance with the provisions of the trust agreement and other transaction security documents in favour of the pledge manager on behalf of the bondholders and other secured creditors of U.S. Bank Trustees Limited. The security includes, among other things, the registration of a commercial pledge for airBaltic trademarks and claim rights, added Zilberts.
He pointed out that the registration of collateral under the terms of the trust agreement is organised in several stages, which explains that certain collateral is also registered after the completion of the bond issue.