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Comment by axlee | Hacker News Reader

Can't Norway bail them out? It's not like they lack the capital, and they're the country largest airline.

Let's see what happens. But Norwegian privately owned, so if the state does bail them out, I sure as hell hope they wipe out the common shareholders in the process. This culture of moral hazard, "privatize the profit, nationalize the risk", is pure bullshit.

I probably agree with providing liquidity in the form of some sort of short-term loan in order to live through a completely unexpected macro crisis, if it's done on equal terms to everyone. But Norwegian won't survive that either, I think.

Yes, this! I wouldn't be happy as a shareholder if this happened but if the last resort for a company is a government bailout the government should own the company and benefit from the recovery.

This is not to contradict what you're saying, but it should be clarified that Norway's flag carrier is Scandinavian Airlines, not Norwegian Air:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scandinavian_Airlines

Again: I'm aware that you haven't said anything to the contrary. But it's useful context.

Well. We Norwegians joke that SAS stands for "svensk alt sammen" (Swedish all together). Some of us consider Norwegian Air Shuttle to be more of a Norwegian airline.

And yes, a bailout is likely. The govt will likely help keep Norwegian Air's planes flying during the Coronavirus period. Additional help is possible.

Looking only at state ownership, the Swedish and Danish governments own about the same share of SAS (~14%) and 1/3rd of the company stock is privately owned.[1]

[1]: https://www.sasgroup.net/annualreports/2018/assets/pdf/eng/S...

Meanwhile, the Finnish government owns 55.8% of Finnair.

SAS is furloughing 10K employees.

Can't Norway bail them out? It's not like they lack the capital, and they're the country largest airline.

Italy just did so for Alitalia.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-italy-alitalia-idUSKBN212...

I think they are norwegian in name only. Their headquarters is london.

Wikipedia states the headquarters is in Fornebu.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norwegian_Air_Shuttle

Why would a country ever bail out a private company? (Except for corruption of course.)

They can always estatise it, but I don't imagine an airliner is strategic enough for that.

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