Lufthansa Group to Sell AirPlus to Sweden’s SEB Kort Bank

The Lufthansa Group has agreed to sell corporate payment provider AirPlus to Stockholm-based SEB Kort Bank AB, the company announced.

The approximately €450 million sale, which includes AirPlus and all its international subsidiaries and branches, is expected to close in the first half of 2024, subject to regulatory approval. AirPlus will remain a member of the UATP network following the sale.

Lufthansa already had made clear its intentions to divest AirPlus, and the agreement with SEB Kort “is the next major step in the Lufthansa Group strategy to focus on its core business going forward,” Lufthansa CFO Remco Steenbergen said in a statement. Its sale of its catering business LSG Group to private equity group Aurelius, announced in April, was another part of that strategy, along with its agreement to acquire a 41 percent stake in Italian national carrier ITA Airways.

“AirPlus is perfectly positioned in the market and, as a part of a larger financial group, will be able to realize its potential better than in the Lufthansa Group,” according to Steenbergen. “In turn, it enables us to focus even more on further improving the profitability and capital returns of the Lufthansa Group core business.”

For SEB Kort, the acquisition is a path to “creating a European leader in the corporate payment solutions market,” Jonas Söderberg, head of the bank’s corporate and private customer division, said in an investor call announcing the agreement on Wednesday. Combining its own commercial card offering with AirPlus’ commercial account business “will create a unique value proposition for us,” and it also expands the bank’s geographic footprint for corporate business, he said. SEB Kort counts about half of the companies on the OMX Nordic 40 stock index as customers, while AirPlus operates mainly outside of the Nordic markets in Europe.

“We are going from a Nordic provider in this business area to a European provider,” Söderberg said.

In addition, the acquisition provides a “technological leap” for SEB Kort, as AirPlus has invested heavily in its IT platform in recent years. SEB Kort plans to “use AirPlus’ modern, cloud-based platform for corporate accounts,” SEB Kort CFO Masih Yazdi said in the call.

SEB Kort reports about 600 employees and had about 2.2 billion Swedish kronor ($206.3 million) of total income in 2022. AirPlus, which has about 1,100 employees and a corporate customer base of about 53,000, reported about €231 million in total revenues last year.

Michael B. Baker www.businesstravelnews.com