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The Minister of the Presidency, António Leitão Amaro, announced on Friday that the Portuguese government is to open talks with the two groups bidding to buy TAP Air Portugal, Air France-KLM and Lufthansa, which submitted binding offers at the end of July.
Quoted by the Lusa news agency, Leitão Amaro said that the bids, although different, have an “overall valuation that is very close”, which he believes justifies an “effort to negotiate” in order to obtain improved proposals from both contenders and allow the government to move towards “a single bidder for the very final negotiation”.
Parpública, the holding company that manages the Portuguese state’s stakes, delivered its report on the two binding offers for the privatisation of TAP to the government for analysis on 1 September.
Two binding offers
Air France-KLM and Lufthansa submitted their bids on 29 July, the last day of the deadline, binding offers to acquire 44.5% of TAP Air Portugal. Parpública then had 30 days to assess the documentation and submit a report to the Portuguese government. Once the bids had been evaluated, the government could invite one or both of the bidders that had submitted binding offers to negotiate and table a new final proposal.
The partial sale process for the national airline, relaunched in 2025 by Luís Montenegro’s government, was reduced to two bidders after the withdrawal of International Airlines Group (IAG) – owner of Iberia – leaving Air France-KLM and Lufthansa still in the running.
The decree-law approved by the government a year ago provides for the sale of up to 49.9% of TAP to private investors, of which 5% is reserved for employees, while the state remains the majority shareholder.
The Minister for Infrastructure, Miguel Pinto Luz, has already said that the chosen investor could take on joint management of the airline as early as 2026, alongside the current board, but that the actual capital injection is only expected to take place in the summer of 2027.