When London’s Gatwick airport was shut down just last week, stranding thousands of passengers hoping to fly somewhere for Christmas, police suspected someone was deliberately flying a drone nearby. Perhaps the projectiles several eyewitnesses claimed to have spotted weren’t drones at all, but popping champagne corks? Including net debt, the transaction values Gatwick at about 8.5 billion pounds ($10.7 billion), or about 20 times Ebitda. They wisely snapped up the airport for just 1.5 billion pounds in 2009, when Britain was mired in recession and regulators forced BAA to break up its monopoly in southeast England. And at least Gatwick isn’t drowning in quite so much debt as its larger rival Heathrow.

Source: Washington Post December 27, 2018 12:22 UTC