NEWS | Wednesday, 03 September 2008

Alitalia ‘rescuer’ disagrees with Air France merge

A report on the Italian Business Daily Il Sole 24 Ore yesterday featured shipowner Gianluigi Apointe, one of the financial backers of Alitalia, insisting that a partnership between Italy’s national airline with Air France-KLM would be a “fundamental mistake”.
Along with other prominent members of the Italian business community, Aponte has stepped in to rescue Alitalia, which is currently on the brink of bankruptcy.
The French-Dutch carrier recently reapproached Alitalia with the intention to re-start collapsed talks on partnership once a rescue plan for the Italian airline in put in place.
But in an interview on Il Sole, Aponte said: “Personally, I am against the idea of having another airline as a shareholder.”
After reaching record debt figures of €1.7 billion last July, Alitalia was placed under special administration after it bid for the status of bankruptcy. Parts of its operation shall now be hived off into a new company. The rescue plan is in fact aimed at leading the way to this development.
Prior to Italian elections last April, the decision to merge Alitalia with Air France-KLM was shelved as Silvio Berlusconi promised an “Italian solution” to its problems, in the run up to his election as Premier. Later that month, one of Berlusconi’s first decisions upon re-election was to give the green light for a €300 million loan to Alitalia from public funds, a move that was not well received by many Italian constituents.