Malaysia Airlines MH17 Crash: Company Shares Plunge About 18% on Second Disaster in Four Months

Shares in troubled Malaysia Airlines, which has suffered two major aircraft disasters in four months, plunged about 18% on 18 July.

The shares fell 17.8% at 0.185 ringgit (£0.34, €0.43, $0.58) on the Kuala Lumpur stock exchange – the lowest level for the day – after one of its passenger jets crashed in violence-hit Ukraine, killing all 295 people aboard.

They pared losses significantly, and are trading at 0.205 ringgit, down 8.89%, as at 4:45 am GMT.

Malaysia Airlines closed at 0.22 ringgit on 17 July, at a market capitalisation of 3.75bn ringgit.

Malaysia Airlines flight MH17, which was flying from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur, was shot down by a surface-to-air missile as it flew over eastern Ukraine, where Ukrainian military forces have been engaged in a fierce battle with pro-Russian rebels. However, it is not yet known who shot the plane down.

The disaster for Malaysia Airlines comes months after its flight MH370 going to Beijing with 239 people aboard went missing. The flight mysteriously veered off its course and is believed to have crashed in the Indian Ocean.

The Southeast Asian carrier's shares have lost more than a third of their value since the beginning of 2014, sparking rumours that the company might be sold or restructured soon as a recovery is unlikely.

"In the history of aviation... there's never been an airline that had to go through two huge disasters in the span of four months, so I don't think there's any historical evidence that they can get out of this," Dow Jones Newswires quoted as saying Mohshin Aziz, research analyst at Maybank Investment Bank.

Malaysia Airlines suffered a 4% decline in traffic for May, and the company's stock price has dropped 27% so far this year.

The shares soared by nearly 17% on 3 July after reports circulated that the state-owned group might be bought out by private companies. According to sources, cited by Reuters, Malaysian state investor Khazanah Nasional is looking to privatise the airline in a bid to save the ailing group.