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Historic day for the Greek airline, after the two largest companies – Aegean Air and Olympic Air, signed a merger agreement in order to better cope with international competition in this particularly difficult moment. 

Major shareholders of both companies agreed to merge the activities of Aegean Air and Olympic Air, so that the new company will enter the Athens Stock Exchange and the companies Olympic Handling and Olympic Engineering will become 100% subsidiaries in the new company. 

After the merger of the two companies, the new company will use the name and logo of Olympic Air after a suitable transition period for changes and adaptations, during which the name and logo of Aegean Air will be used alongside. 

The announcement, which came out yesterday, notes that the contract will be given for approval to the European Commission on competition, which has jurisdiction in this case because of the amount and terms of the deal. Until then all procedural steps and deadlines for the implementation of the merger, which must be taken, will be specified. 

According to the agreement the main shareholder of Aegean (Vassilakis Company) and the sole shareholder of Olympic Air (Marfin Investment Group) will participate in equal shares. The following shareholders will remain in the new company as well: Laskaridi, V. Konstandakopoulou, G. David, L. Yoanou as well as Piraeus Bank, which will retain its analogous participation. 

It should be noted that the contract will come into effect after September 9, 2010, when the period of one year after the privatization of Olympic ends - period for which MIG have tied themselves to the Greek state, that they will not make any shareholder changes, reported in an article Kathimerini newspaper. 

The new company will be managed by Mr. T. Vassilakis and Mr. A. Vgenopoulos, who will ensure the smooth conduct of the work on the merger and the creation of a "national champion" in the airline, which will increase their presence on European level but will also continue to cover flights to the most remote places in Greece. 

Both companies have a total of 64 aircrafts, out of which 39 are advanced Airbuses. Aegean has 2 500 employees, while Olympic Air, together with Olympic Handling and Olympic Engineering has a total of 3 350 employees. Also both companies fly to 65 local destinations and 41 foreign destinations.