GMR Airports is in discussions with Malaysia Airports Holding Berhad (MAHB) to explore the possibility of entering into a fresh agreement for buying the latter’s 11 per cent stake in GMR Hyderabad International Airport.

In February 2018, GMR had entered into an agreement with MAHB to acquire the stake for $76 million. But the deal could not be completed because the Indian company did not fulfil the obligations, as per the agreement before December 31.

Speaking to BusinessLine , Sidharath Kapur, Executive Director of GMR Airports Ltd, said that the infrastructure company is in talks with MAHB for either extending the last date for the previous agreement or enter into a fresh Share Purchasing Agreement.

“There was a long stop date for the contract. And we were in discussions on extending the long stop date. And unfortunately, December 31 was the last stop date and the contract automatically got terminated because the conditions were not met. We are, of course, in discussions with them to extend the last stop date again to or enter into a fresh agreement,” Kapur said.

When asked if the group was looking at other opportunities to raise funds, Kapur said, “We are always looking at opportunities for fund raising.” While Kapoor refused to disclose any further information on the same, he said that they expected the discussions to be fruitful.

GMR is also looking at bidding for operating some of the airports run by the the Airport Authority of India. According to reports, the AAI had said that it with will choose the bidders to operate its six airports — Ahmedabad, Jaipur, Lucknow, Guwahati, Thiruvananthapuram and Mangaluru — on the basis of ‘per-passenger fee’ and finalise the bids on February 28.

Kapur said GMR is evaluating all six of them but did not disclose whether the company would bid for all or some of the airports.

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