But 93% foreign ownership is nowhere near the 49% limit this law is meant to enforce. Curious how VA evades/avoids “Any international airline in Australia must be owned by at least 51% Australian interests.”
You must be very naive in the world of corporate finance not to realise something like this is easily circumvented. There's all sorts of ways around this. When you start playing in the corporate world where revenue uses Billions, there's nothing that realistically can't be done.
VAI is structured such that it is 51% Australian owned, and has its own AOC etc.
Virgin Holdings is 93% owned by foreigners but there still is Virgin International airlines as a subsidiary and I presume it still has the ownership structure that allowed it to fly as a 51% owned Australian company.
Doesn’t that make VA 98% foreign owned?
It does but the international routes are likely operated the same way as prior to the bankruptcy. That means by Virgin International Airlines which did obviously satisfy the regulators in those years.
Yes for sure. As did ANi before that when it fell into full foreign ownership. This isn’t anything particularly new!
And the same goes the other way around, as well: even in countries which seemingly limit the "foreign" ownership to 33% or whatever it is, the "local" companies may equally be owned by structures which are practically owned by overseas interests and profits eventually flow out of the country. For all intents and purposes, it would not be surprising if QF Group controlled and profited from a larger share of some of their overseas ventures than what the cover page shows. You'd just need to start unpacking the web of ownerships.
