Alitalia liquidation moves OK'd PDF Stampa E-mail
ImageRome. The cabinet on Thursday approved two moves making it easier to liquidate troubled national carrier Alitalia so a new company can rise from its ashes.
The first move, contained in an emergency decree, introduces new procedures into Italy's 2004 bankruptcy law, aimed at rescuing major companies, government sources said.
The second, contained in a bill conferring special powers on the government, lays the groundwork for a wider reform of liquidation rules, according to a copy obtained by ANSA.
The bill, if approved, would let government-appointed commissioners immediately sell assets, ''ensuring greater elasticity''.
The existing law, crafted in the wake of the Parmalat collapse, allowed the failed dairy giant to stay in business and gradually work its way back from the brink of financial ruin.
Analysts say Alitalia must be turned around more quickly.
The sale to a new consortium would take place at market prices, the government said.
One aim is to ''avoid interference by an outdated bankruptcy law'' and safeguard creditors while preserving the productive parts of the airline. Investors, who have seen their shares tumble over the last few years, would receive compensation from a special fund set up in 2006. Alitalia is set to be split Friday into a new company with viable parts and a bad company which will take on its liabilities and be put into receivership.
The new company, to be led by financier Roberto Colaninno, will see 16 investors among Italy's top industrial and financial groups putting in some one billion euros to create what has been called a national champion after a merger with Italy's top private airline Air One.
The new Alitalia, which reported operating losses of 800 million euros this year, would cut them to about 250 next year and return to profit in 2013, according to the Italian press. The company will have fewer flights and planes but is looking for a strategic partner like Air France or Lufthansa.
Government advisor Banca Intesa met with Air France executives in Paris Wednesday.
The operation will involve thousands of lay-offs which the government has promised to ease, perhaps via a special change in Italy's lay-off benefit scheme.
The government has hailed the creation as a victory for Premier Silvio Berlusconi but the opposition is worried that taxpayers and small investors will carry the can.
The government has assured critics it will safeguard small investors and is confident the so-called Phoenix plan will not be contested by the European Union for breaking competition rules.
The opposition has also criticised the scale of lay-offs which it says are far fewer than those contained in an Air France takeover rejected by unions during the spring general election.
The government is set to meet unions, which are already raising objections about the plan, on Monday.
The consortium includes Colaninno, the Benetton clothing and financing group, financier Marco Tronchetti Provera, the Ligresti and Caltagirone construction and finance groups, the Riva and Marcegaglia steelmakers, as well as Air One.
Fiscal expert and former finance minister Augusto Fantozzi, tipped to oversee the bad company, said Wednesday Alitalia was ''likely'' to be put into liquidation Friday.
As for the thorny issue of lay-offs, which sank the Air France deal, Matteoli said ''no one would be left in the street'' but declined to confirm press reports that the estimated 7,000 workers could find new jobs in the post office, tax service and government property agencies.
''It hasn't been decided yet,'' Matteoli said, stressing that government lay-off schemes would be available for any workers while they look for new jobs.
Matteoli and other members of Silvio Berlusconi's centre-right coalition claimed the operation would produce a national champion capable of competing internationally - rather than a subsidiary of Air France and its Dutch partner KLM as envisaged by the deal set up last year by the previous centre-left government.
The transport minister said the Air France deal would have knocked Italian tourism while Daniele Capezzone, the spokesman for Berlusconi's Forza Italia party, said that instead of a ''humiliating sell-off'' the premier had kept his promise to keep Alitalia Italian, confounding his centre-left detractors who have voiced repeated doubt that a consortium would be assembled.
On the other side of the political fence, former finance minister Pierluigi Bersani of the Democratic Party said he wouldn't like to see Alitalia becoming a ''mini-Parmalat'' that could hurt small investors and consumers.
He also warned that the European Union, which is already vetting a loan keeping Alitalia in the air, would look very carefully at any ad hoc change to Italy's bankruptcy law.
''I don't want to see us out of the frying pan and into the fire,'' he said.
Financier Colaninno, the man who engineered Italy's biggest private takeover in 1999, of telecommunications giant Telecom Italia, is expected to be installed as president of the new company on Friday with his right-hand man Rocco Sabelli as CEO.
After the change to the bankruptcy law at a cabinet meeting convened for noon Thursday and the first board meeting of the new Alitalia Friday, a first meeting with unions will ''probably'' take place on Monday, government sources said.
 
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