Further to last month’s report about The Omni Group’s acquisition of Aero Services Group, EBAN caught up with Jose Miguel da Costa, Omni’s president and ceo, at EBACE. The company, which is based at Cascais airfield and has a large operation at Lisbon Airport, is the overall shareholder of Aero Services Group (incorporating Aero Services Executive, Handling and Corporate), having purchased 100 per cent

of the company.

Da Costa explains how the deal came to fruition: “We are part of a very large group in Portugal, which had some dealings with Vivendi in the past. As a result of those dealings we were told that Vivendi was willing to sell some of its non-core assets – including Aero Services – and because Omni is an aviation company, that made it more feasible. After about eight months of negotiation we completed the deal.”

Omni sees the acquisition as the ideal opportunity to boost its exposure in the business aviation market and attract new customers.

“On the one hand it will add critical mass to the business. Secondly, it gives us a niche opportunity in France as Aero Services is one of the major business aviation operators in Europe,” said da Costa. “This strengthens the niche from France as the launch centre into Eastern Europe, with the countries that have recently joined the EU, and gives Omni some business aviation capabilities in the Iberian peninsula, so it strengthens our position overall.”

The company aims to keep the different businesses within Aero Services and Omni independent

of one another, with local management. It is also planning to upgrade Aero Services’ Le Bourget facility to encourage new business in the handling sector.

“From an investor point of view, we are very motivated to finance and fund growth plans both for Aero Services and Air Service Management. Omni is concentrating essentially on business aviation; this deal is very good for us as we obviously don’t need to invest in new aircraft because we have backup in France,” said da Costa.

“We do not plan to integrate Aero Services into the group; we view this as a holding which has shareholding groups, so we plan to operate them independently. Aero Services has a business plan which will continue and we are there to help them if we can, to input our management style and use the local knowledge, which is very important,” he added.

“We see this acquisition as very positive and favourable in a difficult environment and we will move forward and grow our market share within France and Europe as well as concentrating on our niche projects; the Airbus project we have with Aero Services’ corporate division is fundamental to the business

plan,” said da Costa. “As the new shareholder is an aviation company, there will be interesting synergies and, for my part, it has been an easy transition.”