The British are coming, the British are coming -- for American Airlines. Well, maybe not.
Despite a Reuters report knocking downBusinessWeek's story of a possible takeover bid for American Airlines parent AMR, speculation abounds. And It would be a good thing, according to Mike Miller -- but he says it probably won't happen.
Miller, a partner at aviation consultancy The Velocity Group, addressed scuttlebutt that suggests Goldman Sachs and British Airways are joining forces to acquire AMR. He pointed out that the U.S. air industry has "limped along for too many years," and could use a rich infusion of extra-national funding. He called the 25% cap on foreign ownership of Yank carriers "archaic," a vestige of the "Vietnam era" -- and pointed out that no U.S. commercial airlines are involved in the controversial 20,000-troop "surge" slated for Iraq.
Miller posited that BusinessWeek "was fed a bad bit of information," and that the publication may have accepted spurious "speculation" as gospel. He declared that such a deal is unlikely to happen, pointing to vociferous "flag-waving" that has little to do with real concerns of "commerce or security."
But if the 3-way pact were to come to fruition? Miller told CNBC's Liz Claman that surely, "a company like British Airways would act in [America's] best interests" in a time of war.
