Toulouse-Blagnac Airport’s Chinese owner said its sale of a 49.99 per cent stake in France’s fifth largest airfield to the French builder Eiffage SA is now in the final stages of negotiations. The sale by Casil Europe, once finalised, would mark the end of a tumultuous investment in the airport just outside the city of Toulouse, which has been wracked by legal wrangling. France’s competition watchdog gave the go-ahead to Eiffage, the third-largest civil engineering builder in France and a contractor in the Channel Tunnel, for its buyout of Toulouse-Blagnac Airport from Casil in an announcement issued on December 12. A spokeswoman for Hong Kong entrepreneur Mike Poon Ho-man’s Friedmann Pacific Asset Management told the Post on Tuesday that negotiations are in their final stages. Casil Europe was established as a venture between Shandong Hi-Speed Group and Friedmann Pacific Asset Management in 2014, and was an early adopter of projects under the Belt and Road Initiative, Beijing’s ambitious plan to link dozens of economies into a China-centred trading network. Casil had been unable to “access” the airport’s remaining shareholders to jointly develop and expand Toulouse-Blagnac, French newspaper Le Figaro has said, citing the economy ministry in saying that the stake owners were “disengaging” with their Chinese shareholder. Casil paid € 308 million (US$344 million) in 2015 for the biggest single stake in Toulouse-Blagnac, in a deal hailed at the time as a successful example of the privatisation of public assets by Francois Hollande’s government. French builder Eiffage in talks to buy Toulouse-Blagnac airport Toulouse-Blagnac is the fifth-largest airfield in France after Charles de Gaulle in Paris. It handled 9.6 million passengers in 2018, up 25 per cent from 2015 when Casil bought it, connecting 74 flight routes mostly in Europe and northern Africa. Located less than 7 kilometres (4.3 miles) from Airbus’ base in Toulouse, the airfield has been the testing site for most of the manufacturer’s new aircraft. When the Airbus A380 double-decker aircraft took off on its maiden flight in April 2005, it did so from Toulouse-Blagnac. ATR, the Franco-Italian manufacturer of propeller-driven civilian aircraft, is headquartered on the airport’s grounds. Revenue at Toulouse-Blagnac rose by almost 20 per cent to € 147 million (US$164 million) in 2018, from € 122.9 million when Casil bought it in 2015. Earnings before interest, taxes and depreciation (Ebitda) rose to € 51.9 million (US$58 million) from € 41.6 million in 2015. China’s Xi Jinping rolls out the big guns for his European ‘belt and road’ show Before the privatisation of Toulouse-Blagnac, the French government owned 60 per cent of the airfield. In early 2018, the French government, which still holds a 10.01 per cent stake, decided to keep its shares, meaning the Chinese shareholder was unable to become a majority owner. Casil then expressed its willingness to find a potential buyer of its shares. Besides Toulouse-Blagnac, Casil also owns and operates an airport in the Albanian capital of Tirana, in a venture with China Everbright.