Fastjet's largest investor opts out

Johannesburg - Budget airline Fastjet said its largest shareholder, Lonrho Ltd, had sold its full stake in the carrier for about $238m.

Lonrho sold about 52.4 shares in the airline for 2.85 pence per share, a 17 discount to the closing price of Fastjet's stock on Wednesday.

London-listed stock of Fastjet, the first “European style” low cost carrier to arrive in South Africa, was down 12% at 3.00 pence on Thursday afternoon.

Lonrho, an agriculture-focused conglomerate whose roots go back more than a 100 years to colonial Africa, owned 11.27% of Fastjet as of October 31 according to Thomson Reuters data.

Lonrho said in May that it was being bought out by Swiss billionaire Thomas Schmidheiny and Swiss investor Rainer-Marc Frey.

Fastjet, backed by easyJet's billionaire founder Stelios Haji-Ioannou, has ambitions to become the first pan-African low-cost carrier and operates within Kenya, Tanzania, Ghana and Angola.