Snow family closes door to any sale of Canberra Airport

Ownership of the Canberra hub has been a subject of interest given the surge of airport M&A deals in the past year, as airline travel rebounds from the pandemic lows and major institutions hunt for yield.

The Snows are among only three families in Australia to own stakes in metro airports, which have been snapped up by pension funds and infrastructure investors since government kicked off privatisations in the 1990s.

The legacy of Terry Snow will carry on his renowned philanthropic efforts, much of it through The Snow Foundation which he set up with his brother George three decades ago.

Stephen Byron, director of The Snow Foundation and stepson of the late-Terry Snow, said the family had no intention of selling Canberra Airport in the medium to long term – even a minority share.

“I can’t speak for 20 or 40 years’ time, but as a family, we’ve talked about it only recently, and we think that it’s an asset that the family wants to keep for the long term,” Byron told The Australian Financial Review.

While it’s not a formal policy, most of the dividends generated from the airport each year went into funding the organisations supported by The Snow Foundation, he said.

“[Funding] starts as money earned at the airport and is distributed from the airport over to that,” Byron said.

As the family works through its longer-term arrangements, Tom Snow, one of the patriarch’s four children, this week stepped down from chairing Canberra Airport’s board after 22 years to focus on the family’s philanthropic endeavours.

He makes way for former Perth Airport chief executive Brad Geatches, who has been a non-executive director of Canberra Airport since 2021.

Last year, The Snow Foundation funded 167 organisations and contributed $13.7 million to the community, according to its 2024 annual report.

The changing of the guard comes as the Snow family’s real estate arm, Capital Property Group, begins construction this month on a $500 million commercial precinct in the heart of Canberra.

On the corner of London Circuit and Northbourne Avenues – and dubbed London Central – it’s the family’s first major project since Terry Snow’s passing.

Construction Control has been appointed to build the mixed-use project, which is due to be complete by late 2028. It has been designed by architectural firm Johnson Pilton Walker.

It will feature 65,000 square metres of office space across as many as three buildings, a ground floor retail, food and beverage precinct, and an urban park. There’s also potential for a hotel and residential suites.

Richard Snow, head of property at Capital Property Group and Byron’s cousin, said the precinct’s design was driven by the change in how people work since COVID-19.

“[There’s] a demand for a new, modern, sustainable office space that promotes collaboration, wellness, working together,” Snow told the Financial Review. “We feel that this project will definitely respond to those new ways of working.”

People were working from the office roughly three to four days depending on the organisation in ACT, so the project’s design needed to include different types and flexible of office spaces, he said.

London Central will be the fifth all-electric building delivered by Capital Property, in line with the commonwealth government’s net zero workplace policy which is mandating that all building are electric by July next year for its leased office space.