According to sources familiar with the injunction process, the Catalonian government will have priority over the Scandinavian airline SAS when it comes to acting as a creditor for Spanair should part of Spanair's debt be collected. The debt totals 474 million euros in debt, assuming that the 260 million from stockholders and the 214 million in debt provided by third parties are factored in.
If the compan's stock is paid to creditors, which is an unlikely situation considering that the company does not even own the fleet of thirty or so airplanes it has been using and flying rights cannot be sold in Spain, the Catalonian government would try to recover a 56-million euro participative loan in addition to other forms of credit that it has sought through public lenders such as the Fira de Barcelona or the Catalonian Institute of Finance.
SAS, the Scandinavian company that owns 10.9% of Spanair, will not have such luck, although it is true that the company has already accepted its fate and that it will be nearly impossible to pay its 149-million euro loan that comes to term on January 30, 2014. On Friday, as soon as SAS found out about Spanair's shutdown, the company announced that it would provision 28 million euros, considering that it claimed that it owned no shares in Spanair on its balance sheets, but in reality owns 10.9%.
