Captain G.R. Gopinath, the promoter of Air Deccan said that the planned merger of Air Deccan with Kingfisher Airlines could take some more time (2-3 months).

While addressing the newspersons, Mr. Gopinath said that the unification of the two state carriers has to be sanctioned not only by the two panels, but also by the institutional investors, independent directors and other shareholders.

The Air Deccan’s board has four independent Directors including IIM Prof. Thiru Narayan, former tennis player Mr. Vijay Amritraj, and Mr. A.K. Ganguly, former Managing Director, Nabisco, Malaysia.

Mr. Gopinath said, “There are several statutory issues that need to be sorted out before the merger can go through. All this will take some time.”

The matter that has solved yet is the share swap ratio for transferring shares of one airline to the other

A senior Air Deccan official said, “The share swap ratio can be decided only after some valuation is done of Kingfisher Airlines, which is not a listed entity, and this has to be agreed to by the board. Finding the valuation of Air Deccan, a listed company, is not difficult.”

“Besides, the board of Air Deccan has to give an in-principle approval for the merger before it can go through; the final approval can come only after a meeting of an EGM. At the moment, it looks like it would have to be reverse merger with Kingfisher merging into Air Deccan,” the official added.