‘Air Deccan has found best partner in UB’

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Bangalore, July 17

Days before the UB Group floats its open offer to acquire another 20 per cent stake in Deccan Aviation , both Mr Vijay Mallya and Mr G.R. Gopinath spent some quiet moments together at the latter's farm house near Hassan, 200 km from Bangalore last weekend.

"He is straight forward to the 'T'," says Mr Gopinath, Executive Chairman of Deccan Aviation, which runs Air Deccan, about Mr Mallya.

The story goes that both the airline honchos took just 45 minutes to decide that the UB Group will buy 26 per cent stake in Deccan Aviation and that Mr Mallya even agreed to pay Rs 125-150 crore more than what Mr Gopinath hoped to get.

When ICICI Bank and Capital One were being roped in to finance Deccan Aviation, it took nearly 45 days of hard bargaining to put pen to paper and the 50-page document had clauses like "drag along rights," which means that if the airline continues to make losses, the promoters would have to agree to sell their airline to whoever the financial institutions select as buyer.

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