IIn the sales gamble for the insolvent Hunsrück Airport Hahn, another bidder surprisingly appeared in addition to the Nürburgring holding company. This interested party, a Mainz real estate investor called the Richter Group, has already signed a notarial purchase agreement through a subsidiary and transferred a purchase price to a so-called escrow account.
According to dpa information, Hahn’s insolvency administrator Jan Markus Plathner has secured another option if the Federal Ministry of Economics does not give the green light to the Nürburgring holding company NR Holding around the Russian Viktor Charitonin in accordance with the Foreign Trade and Payments Act.
Ultimately, only one purchase contract is executed
With regard to the Richter Group, Plathner said that a second purchase contract had also been negotiated and notarized “in the event that the conditions set out in the first contract do not occur”. The parallel purchase contracts with the two independent investors are still subject to conditions “so that ultimately only one purchase contract will be completed”. The next steps will be decided at special creditor meetings of several Hahn sister companies next Tuesday before the insolvency court in Bad Kreuznach. “The further developments in the process are open,” explained Plathner.
The former investor with the highest purchase offer in the original Hahn bidding process, Frankfurt Swift Conjoy GmbH, never paid the agreed purchase price, according to dpa information. The company has not responded to several dpa inquiries. Plathner confirmed that sale “was not completed by Swift Conjoy.” According to dpa information, the regulation to transfer the complete purchase price in advance had not yet taken effect.
Russian entrepreneur is not on any EU sanctions list
After the failure of the Swift Conjoy, which was once the highest bidder, the bidder with the second highest offer at the time, NR Holding around the Russian pharmaceutical company Charitonin, has now entered Hahn Airport with a purchase agreement and around 20 million euros. Charitonin is not on any EU sanctions list for Russia, which is waging a war of aggression against Ukraine. NR Holding confirmed: “Yes, we have signed a contract. However, this is subject to various conditions precedent.”
According to dpa information, the third-highest offer in the original Hahn bidding process came from the Richter Group. The company informed dpa on Saturday that it had renamed an existing subsidiary Flughafen Frankfurt Hahn Betriebs GmbH, which is acting as the buyer of the airport.
Her managing director Julia Richter said to the dpa with a view to the dpa reports about the entry of a Russian on the Hahn: “Everything has now rolled over.” Her group of companies did not previously know that the NR Holding had also signed a purchase contract and paid. Some of their employees first mistakenly thought of a joint venture with the Russian Charitonin when they heard the reports about NR Holding joining Hahn.
A long time ago, the state of Hesse got involved with 17.5 percent of the shares in the airport. According to the Hessian Ministry of Finance in Wiesbaden, the state “no longer has any strategic interest in Hahn Airport and is therefore still willing to sell its shares – to whom, that must be checked and decided on a case-by-case basis if there is an interest in buying”. The lawyer Plathner emphasized that in the insolvency, which has been ongoing since autumn 2021, a whole bundle of restructuring measures has been implemented “that make Hahn Airport more attractive for airlines and passengers again”. The 2023 summer flight schedule, which starts at the end of March, will “contain further new European destinations”.
Night flight permit is sought after
The rather remote Hahn Airport is a former US military airport with a checkered history. For example, a large Chinese corporation was in charge here for a long time. The only major airport in Rhineland-Palatinate has no rail connection, but a rare and coveted night flight permit.
Julia Richter from the Richter Group said: “First the Chinese and then a Russian who wants to buy a former US military airport in the middle of Germany and Europe in a war in Ukraine – that will certainly be cannibalized at the Mainz carnival.”