Heathrow’s new biggest shareholder backs airport expansion

Heathrow’s incoming largest shareholder has thrown its weight behind expanding the UK’s largest airport, and said it would back management if it tried to build a third runway. French private equity group Ardian agreed to buy a 23% stake in Heathrow in June, part of a GBP3.3b shake-up in ownership at the airport which also saw Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund buy a stake. With the deal expected to complete before the end of next month, Ardian’s head of infrastructure Mathias Burghardt told the Financial Times that Heathrow needed to expand in the coming years. “Growth is in our DNA. We don’t invest in companies, or in infrastructure if they don’t have a growth plan,” he said. Heathrow’s CE Thomas Woldbye is within months expected to announce the airport’s first expansion plan since the pandemic, which will prioritise small-scale improvements to increase passenger numbers. He told an industry conference on Monday that Heathrow hoped to make a final decision on whether to press ahead with the planning process for a third runway by the end of 2025. But the only way to significantly increase capacity would be to build a new runway, a politically contentious topic that has remained unresolved for decades. Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer’s cabinet is split over whether to back a third runway, the FT reported this month. Burghardt backed Woldbye’s plan, and said he would then support a third runway if there was “consensus” behind it. “The first thing is to grow the airport within the existing footprint, and then . . . how can we ensure growth beyond the existing footprint?” “If management designs growth, which could be a third runway . . . and if there is consensus, first with the government, but beyond that, other stakeholders, we certainly will support it for sure,” he said. But amid rising concerns about the difficulty of decarbonising aviation, Burghardt said any plans would be contingent on a credible plan to lower emissions. <br/>