George Trefgarne

Are these Spanish builders really fit to run Heathrow?

BAA’s new owners, Grupo Ferrovial, are too busy juggling their debt portfolio to attend to the current crisis in Britain’s major airports

After the chaotic scenes of the past few weeks, with probably more than a million travellers caught up at Heathrow alone, it is surely time to rebrand BAA. In the fashionable corporate way, those three initials no longer actually stand for anything, but everyone thinks they still signify the British Airports Authority. This unloved operator is, however, no longer either British or an authority. In fact, it is a private company controlled by a secretive family of Spanish builders.

A consortium led by Grupo Ferrovial, a Spanish construction giant still controlled by its 85-year-old founder, wheelchair-bound Rafael del Pino, launched a hostile bid in February for BAA and finally completed its £10 billion takeover in mid-August, when BAA’s shares were delisted from the London Stock Exchange.

My instinctive position on foreign takeovers is to regard them as a good thing, a manifestation of global capitalism at work. Without foreign buyers, the Footsie would be in the doldrums. Anyway, huge British companies like BP, Vodafone and HSBC are themselves built on overseas acquisitions.

But the sale of BAA self-evidently raises urgent questions. Is it right that a monopoly over our major airports should be sold to unaccountable foreigners? And where have the new Spanish owners been during the worst crisis ever to hit Britain’s airports?

These are, incidentally, questions which we should also be asking about the takeover of other utilities. London Electricity is owned by an arm of the French government. Yet the French have failed to open up their own energy market, with the consequence that energy prices here are much higher than they are in France. And the hosepipe ban by Thames Water is testament to the incompetence of its German owners, RWE. Utilities are strategic assets on which the rest of the economy depends.

Already a subscriber? Log in

Keep reading with a free trial

Subscribe and get your first month of online and app access for free. After that it’s just £1 a week.

There’s no commitment, you can cancel any time.

Or

Unlock more articles

REGISTER

Comments

Don't miss out

Join the conversation with other Spectator readers. Subscribe to leave a comment.

Already a subscriber? Log in