Finally, after a long wait and a battle with the directors, the Spirit Airlines shareholders have agreed to proceed with JetBlue Airways’ acquisition.
Spirit Airlines to be acquired by JetBlue Airways
It had been a very long time since the shareholders had been in a battle with the company directors over the selling of Spirit Airlines to JetBlue Airways.
Finally, it seems that the directors have prevailed in convincing the investors to sell the company to JetBlue Airways.
According to JetBlue Airways officials, their goal is to acquire Spirit Airlines and form the fifth-largest carrier in the United States.
However, there is now a major obstacle that is in the way of JetBlue Airways and Spirit Airlines, which is in the form of regulators.
JetBlue’s Proposal
It was back in the month of April when JetBlue had approached Spirit Airlines with a proposal of acquiring the latter.
JetBlue reportedly offered a $3.8 billion bid for the acquisition of Spirit Airlines. Initially, Spirit Airlines was in talks with Frontier Airlines which had shared its intentions of acquiring Spirit.
It had been a while since both companies had been in talks with each other. At that time, Spirit Airlines had agreed that they would be acquired by Frontier Airlines.
Just when things were going in favor of Frontier Airlines, JetBlue entered the scene with a higher offer. Initially, the shareholders rejected JetBlue’s offer and they wanted to proceed with Frontier Airlines.
However, the directors wanted to proceed with JetBlue as the company was offering a higher bid. Since then, the matter had been between the directors and the shareholders.
Following the agreement, the deal is to finalize between Spirit and JetBlue. JetBlue officials have claimed that their target is to finalize the transactions of acquisition by the end of the second quarter of 2024.
Regulatory Concerns
Although things are all agreed upon between the major airline companies the competition regulator has reservations about the merger.
The competition regulator wants to look into the merger and go through the details to establish if it would harm the competition or not.
The regulator also wants to investigate if the merger would cause the fare prices for the passengers to go up because of the merger.
Until the investigation is over at the regulatory authority’s end, both companies would need to remain patient. They will need to wait it out to see exactly what the regulatory authority has to say.
The companies can proceed with the deal if the regulatory authority sees no harm due to the merger between the companies.
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