Here are the two offers for Ita Airways
What future for Ita Airways? What do the offers of the two consortiums provide? Facts, names, numbers and insights in the Start Magazine special
While politics, now in the midst of the electoral campaign, thinks of something else, a last, huge, dossier still to be closed peeps out among the boxes that now crowd the desk of the outgoing Prime Minister, Mario Draghi : the rescue of Ita Airways, last chapter of the Alitalia saga.
On Monday midnight the deadlines for the deposit of offers expired, the third proposal presented by the two applicants since the beginning of the year. On the one hand MSC and Lufthansa; on the other, the Certares fund with Air France-KLM and Delta Airlines. It happens that the third time is played right under elections, with a technical government on the other side of the table. For once in a while, in short, it will not be politics that will take care of the fate of the national airline, given that, if we run, there is time to close the preliminary sale before the policies of 25 September.
The executive has every interest in it, given that the election campaign could add further obstacles of a purely propaganda nature to the negotiation, while the two consortiums have long listened to their ears and, knowing how things are going in our country, they seem to be evaluating whether to secure the contract with a withdrawal clause that would be triggered in the event that the new tenant of Palazzo Chigi were to confetti the agreement or try to block the procedure.
If you look at the good of the company, Ita Airways needs partners so as not to be suffocated by low cost which, despite a thousand difficulties and the farewell to really cheap flights (those under 10 euros), continue to dominate the domestic market ( Ryanair is the first Italian carrier for air traffic, followed by easyJet and Wizz Air according to ENAC 2021 data). The answer then is in international routes, but money is needed.
According to Corriere della Sera , which consulted ministerial sources, between the two proposals “there is an economic difference of 210 million: both consortiums attribute to Ita an enterprise value of approximately 950 million. But if MSC and Lufthansa want to take over 80% (of which 60% for the Aponte family and 20% for the Germans), Certares said he was willing to reduce its stake to 55-57%, leaving the other part to the Italian State ". Put simply, MSC-Lufthansa want privatization, Certares would enter in a delicate way, with a co-management. "This last aspect – writes the RCS newspaper – is confirmed by the fact that the US fund would allow the MEF to choose the president, but it is not clear whether with executive functions or in a representative role, while all the powers would be the ad ".
The offer of Certares, adds Mf-Milano Finanza, provides for the possibility of entry of commercial partners. The French airline Air France would enter 9.9% to subsequently increase the stake in the former Alitalia but without any restrictions as for Delta. The way of understanding the game is antithetical: Msc-Lufthansa do not want to continually interact with Italian politics, at the cost of taking on the entire business risk; rivals prefer to have at their side a partner like the state, who would never make their national airline go bankrupt, as demonstrated with the billions burned to save Alitalia.
If you look at the well-being of the national airline and its positioning on international routes, the best option could be the Delta-Air France-KLM consortium, considering that Delta Air Lines is the second largest airline in the world, with 870 aircraft in the hangars of which about 300 are engaged in long-haul routes. However, Lufthansa has its third American airline, United, which, although not competing for Ita Airways, is a partner in Lufthansa in Star Alliance, the network of 28 companies from Asia to South America, a competitor of SkyTeam.
Given the Germans' passion for Italy, it is not surprising that CEO Carsten Spohr declared that he wanted to increase his presence in our skies "with or without Ita Airways", an intention proven by recent investments in Air Dolomiti, the Italian subsidiary of Lufthansa. “But the novelty – writes Corsera – is the premium on the 20% of the Mef that would be recognized to the State at the time of public disposal if better economic results than the business plan are achieved. At that point, the estimate is that the public purse would get about 100 million more from MSC and Lufthansa, thus bringing the economic differential between the offers of the two consortiums to 310 million ".
It will not be easy to strike the best of the chords. Today we regret those formulated by foreign partners who were guilty of neglect in the past by the Italian government which, in fact, was the promoter of the consortium of brave captains. The world, with the pandemic, has changed, airlines have suffered more than any other actor, the lockdown and war, inflation, the increase in fuel have done the rest. The delicate issues, which the Mef will carefully evaluate, are more or less the usual ones, inherited from the Alitalia dossier and go far beyond the classics, such as shareholdings, governance, routes and planned investments, touching on safeguarding of Italianity, redundancies and the need to keep the Fiumicino hub central.
START MAGAZINE'S LATEST INSIGHTS ON THE FUTURE OF ITA:
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This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/smartcity/ecco-le-due-offerte-per-ita-airways/ on Wed, 24 Aug 2022 09:54:37 +0000.