News
HNA Group acquires ICE, Monarch Airlines next?
April 22nd 2016
Haikou-headquartered HNA Tourism Group, a subsidiary of the HNA Group, has agreed to acquire London-based foreign exchange specialist, International Currency Exchange (ICE) for an undisclosed fee. Read More » ICE has a network of more than 350 branches and bureaux in 70 airports in 19 countries. Its key business is foreign currency exchange and foreign currency ATM transactions.
HNA Tourism said: "The acquisition of one of the world's largest currency exchange companies, ICE, adds significant weight to HNA Tourism's building of an integrated industry value chain and adds wings to our global coverage of financial services for overseas tourism, and will provide important support to the acceleration of the pace of our internationalisation".
As economic growth has slowed on the Mainland, Chinese firms have been increasingly looking overseas for development opportunities. HNA is probably the strongest case in point in the airline and travel sector, following its acquisitions of Avolon Holdings, Swissport and Gateway Group in the past half year.
HNA is the majority owner of Beijing Capital Airlines, Chang An Airlines, Fuzhou Airlines, Grand China Air, GX Airlines, Hainan Airlines, HK Express, Hong Kong Airlines, Lucky Air, Tianjin Airlines, Urumqi Air, West Air and Yangtze River Express. Overseas, it has shareholdings in Comair, Azul Brazilian Airlines, Aigle Azur and Africa World Airlines.
HNA also has financial interests in tourism companies, with more than 450 hotels across more than 30 countries and territories in its portfolio.
Its next purchase could be London Luton-based Monarch Airlines, Sky News has reported, after it transpired HNA has hired financial firm, Rothschild, to evaluate a possible acquisition of up to 49% of the British leisure market carrier, which operates 34 A320 Family aircraft.
HNA could be going head-to-head with British LCC, EasyJet, in the bid for Monarch, according to British media reports this week.
