The Alitalia-saga is finally over…
Jacopo Ieranò
February 2, 2009
How could we not write a short post on the recently concluded Alitalia-saga? Here is just a little summary of the most important facts concerning the restructuring plan conceptualised by the Italian government:
Alitalia has been making losses for the last several years. The previous government has tried to sell the carrier with all its debts to Air France/KLM who has been fortunate enough to find a) persistent negotiators among the Italian trade unions (they were so persistent that they finally blew the deal); and b) a strong disagreement from the opposition leader Silvio Berlusconi who promised to find an Italian “rescuer” for Alitalia.
Mr. Berlusconi then won the elections, and urged some Italian businessmen to “save” Alitalia. And indeed, after the necessary amendments to the Italian bankruptcy law and the derogation of the Italian merger control law a company called Compagnia Aerea Italiana (“CAI”) was created. This company then acquired most of Alitalia’s assets for 1.052 billion €, merged them with Air One and left behind an empty company with the debts. The Italian Competition Authority had limited powers to review the merger between the two most important Italian carriers due to the derogation which had been introduced previously and therefore just imposed several behavioural remedies on the merging parties. Among others, the obligation to introduce a text messaging service which should guarantee Alitalia’s passengers the availability of information in real time. Impressive! I strongly recommend the reading of this decision of the Autorità. It takes a while to understand why the Italian competition authority refused to impose the only serious remedy submitted by the merging parties. The decision can be found on the Italian Competition Authority’s homepage www.agcm.it (Provvedimento C9812 – Compagnia Aerea Italiana/Alitalia Linee Aeree Italiane – AIRONE, Bollettino n. 46/2008). Unfortunately the decision is available only in Italian.
After the conclusion of the merger between Alitalia and Air One via CAI, the Italian government and CAI have been looking for an international partner who was supposed to acquire approximately 25% of new Alitalia’ s shares without having the possibility to control CAI. Lufthansa and Air France/KLM expressed their interest to participate in CAI and be the strategic partner of the new company. Finally, Air France/KLM’s CEO Mr. Spinettai was happy to communicate that several months after having tried to acquire Alitalia with all its debts, his company is now one of the biggest shareholders of a debt-free Alitalia. Sounds like a pretty good deal to me. Mr. John Doe’s Italian equivalent “Mario Rossi” who flies on the re-monopolized Milan – Rome route, apparently one of the most profitable routes in Europe, probably has a different opinion.
In the meantime the European Commission has decided that the 300M€ loan from the Italian Government to Alitalia constituted illegal state aid and had to be recovered. In addition to that the Commission decided that, if some conditions were respected, the sale of Alitalia’s assets to CAI did not constitute state aid. (check) or was it the restructuring plan?
I guess there is little to comment about the above mentioned facts. A brilliant plan, with an extraordinary execution.
No Comments »
No comments yet.
RSS feed for comments on this post. | TrackBack URI | bookmark on del.icio.us.
Leave a comment
Advertencia de Protección de Datos:
Los datos personales capturados con ocasión de la utilización del formulario de comentarios (nombre/apodo, dirección de correo electrónico, sitio web y dirección IP), serán incluidos en un fichero del propietario del sitio web y se publicarán (excepto su dirección de correo electrónico y su dirección IP) en esta página con la finalidad de permitir opinar públicamente al lector, así como para en su caso contestar al comentario o consultas que formule. Podrá ejercitar sus derechos de acceso, de rectificación, de cancelación y de oposición en lo referido a dichos datos personales dirigiendo un correo electrónico a la dirección: datos.personales@blogeuropa.eu.
----
Privacy notice:
Please be informed that by using the comments form, your personal data (name/nickname, e-mail address, website and IP address), will be included in a file owned by the website proprietor and published along your comment (except for your e-mail and IP addresses), in order for the reader to publicly comment, as well as -should that be the case-, to respond to any comment or query that readers may have made. You will be able to exercise your rights to access, rectify, cancel and oppose such personal data by sending an e-mail to the following address: datos.personales@blogeuropa.eu.