Australia's Qantas Airways agreed on Thursday to a sweetened $8.7 billion buyout offer from a group led by Macquarie Bank and private equity firm Texas Pacific Group in the world's biggest airline takeover, Reuters reported. The sale of the national icon, dubbed the flying kangaroo, has stirred nationalistic sentiment and reached the top levels of Australian politics, prompting the bidding group to stress that the airline would remain majority Australian owned. However, Prime Minister John Howard signaled the government was unlikely to interfere in any change of hands of the airline, founded 86 years ago in outback Queensland as an air taxi service. "I hope that the Qantas we know is the Qantas we keep. People like Qantas. It is an icon. That doesn't mean to say its shares can't change hands," Howard told Australian Broadcasting Corp. radio. The offer tops an $8.6 billion bid for bankrupt Delta Airlines by U.S. Airways Go up in November, and would be the biggest private-equity buyout in Asia, outside of Japan, if approved by shareholders early next year.
