HONG KONG, May 22: Swire Pacific Ltd group finance director Peter Johansen said on Thursday there were no immediate plans to list local carrier Hong Kong Dragon Airlines.

"There really is no immediate plan for a flotation," he told Reuters in an interview.

Johansen said if Dragonair's largest single shareholder China National Aviation Corp (CNAC) went ahead with its own listing plans on the Hong Kong stock exchange, it "would really preclude any immediate flotation of Dragonair".

But he said there was no "immediate urgency" to float the local carrier."At the time that we did the reorganisation of our aviation interests last year, we did say that it was the intention that Dragonair would be floated.

Despite a lot of rumour and hype that was going on we never actually did press any button in terms of starting the flotation procedure, although we did go a fair way down the track," said Johansen.

"Dragonair continues to do well and we are happy with our 26 per cent shareholding, which will obviously come down if the flotation goes ahead."Swire sold part of its Dragonair stake to CNAC last year. (Reuter)

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