Because the MSC-Lufthansa consortium is preferable for Ita
What will the future of Ita be? The analysis by Paolo Rubino and Salvatore Santangelo
If there is an industry capable of unleashing the rhetorical déclic of politics, there is little doubt that this is still that of air transport. Much more than the strategic sectors of steel, energy, finance or the digital fashionist or the mysterious rare earths. Even more than the mythological automotive.
And it is no coincidence that air transport has always been defined as the "sexy industry" all over the world. It is sexy because it evokes journeys and discoveries, functionally detaches itself from earthly materiality to unfold in the skies, takes off and lands from places, airports, the quintessence of the cultural, ethnic and social melting pot. If Freud had lived beyond 1939, in the postwar boom of air travel, he would probably have decoded the relationship between aircraft and airport in the easy, albeit banal, topos of the erotic relationship par excellence.
Destiny, purpose and role of Italian air transport are topics that have animated the national debate for over thirty years and therefore this debate has repeatedly crossed with the electoral campaigns of the parties. Punctual, in the current anomalously summer electoral competition, the confrontation-clash between the political parties on the theme of national air transport and on the destiny, purpose and role of Alitalia reincarnated in Ita Airways. The debate is, as always, unfortunately, characterized by an ideological prejudice of the premises and superficiality of the contents. In other words, rather boorish.
On the left (so to speak) the prejudice is constituted by the presbyopic lenses of uncritical proglobalism, the superficiality of the idea that international finance exists to, and wants, to solve the problems of the national industry. On the right, the lenses are short-sighted in the ideological assumption that even small, as long as national, the idea that the owners of ancient bathing concessions, medieval taxi licenses, small, often dilapidated hotels, plethoric restaurants is always beautiful and superficial and bars, should benefit from a small national airline that brings them herds of foreign tourists directly without going through “foreign” hubs.
Primitive, emotional debate, aimed at gaining sympathy and votes of mere belly that last the space of the elections and inevitably collapse when from the easy rhetoric of the utterances one should pass to the hard realization of the facts. And the facts are that in order to make a good air transport, essential conditions are required: iron clarity of objectives, high and well-paid staff competence, wide, deep, onerous and systemic logistic assistance, strength and negotiation competence with upstream industrial sectors, builders OEM first of all, downstream, CRS distribution and above all Internet, power of capital available with long returns, even for a very long period.
That air transport, in the thirty years of furious debates, has undergone profound transformations and is now facing a new epochal change of little interest to the debates. Consequently, the fate, purpose and role of the reincarnated Alitalia are discussed in a hyperuranium segregated from the current scenario and future prospects of the industry.
Which is, among those on the table, the most competent proposal for Ita Airways, projected into the essential, especially for Italy, the scenario of logistical intermodality, with adequate potential capital and mainly industrial means, less conditioned by financial interests shortly? It seems to the writer that the proposal of the MSC-Lufthansa duo responds in a more adequate, modern and visionary way to the national needs of air transport.
Certainly the German carrier appears to be the most advanced, also for genetic predisposition, in the elaboration of a business model that goes beyond the stale strategy of the mega hub. Furthermore, the Italian shipowner is certainly world champion in the field of logistic integration of platforms and, together, the duo appears to be the best equipped for the development of the intermodal model. Nor does it hurt that, as far as is known about the proposal, the shipowner's role is not designed as a fig leaf to cover a brutal German annexation of Italian air transport.
And frankly, the question of the share of capital that will remain in the hands of the Italian public entity appears to be of vile interest. For this to make sense, it would be necessary that the implicit golden power, purely interdictive, was a tool that was actually and clearly accessible to those who own it. Unfortunately in the hands of the government left there is the risk of being the eunuch's threat to the uncritical, Pavlovian, enslavement to globalism.
For the likely right-wing government it would risk being a brutal club in the hands of a hypertrophic child. Rather, the politicians who contribute to the national government should be insinuated with the idea of not wasting time negotiating routes, airports, employment levels and other technicalities with the buyer duo for which their own skills are elementary and fragile compared to those of Lufthansa and MSC. Above all, these are transient topics, by nature subject to change according to the variation of the scenarios, therefore useless in setting up an asset sale agreement.
It is on the governance of the future corporate entity that it would be worth negotiating. The right to appoint the administrative body, at least for the first three terms, would be a topic of real interest. And for this, any share, even a minimal one, would be enough. Obviously, leaving to the majority shareholders the broadest and most incisive powers of control over the work, and the results, of the CEO.
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/smartcity/ita-cordata-msc-lufthansa/ on Fri, 19 Aug 2022 10:40:57 +0000.