Aday after acquiring 13.5% more stake in Mumbai International Airport to emerge as controlling stakeholder, GVK Power and Infrastructure on Wednesday 19. 10. 2011, acquired 5.38 crore shares constituting 14% stake in Bangalore International Airport (BIAL) from Siemens Project Ventures for 613.82 crore. With this, the total holding of GVK in BIAL, which operates the Bengaluru International Airport, stands increased to 43% from 29%. Accordingly, GVK emerges as the largest shareholder in BIAL, which was awarded the mandate to modernise the Bengaluru airport in July 2004.

In a statement, GVK group chairman GV Krishna Reddy said: “This strategic transaction will be very crucial to the next phase of growth of Bengaluru International Airport.”

Siemens’ holding in BIAL will now come down to 26%, while the Karnataka government and the Airports Authority of India will hold 13% each and Zurich Airports will have 5%.

Hyderabad-based GVK is India’s largest airport operator in the private sector and it currently operates two airports in India — one each at Mumbai and Bangalore, which together account for passenger traffic of about 43 million a year.

Source: 20. 10. 2011, ET.