Ita Airways, the Treasury signs the memorandum with Lufthansa: negotiations begin – Corriere.it

Negotiations with Lufthansa on the future of Ita Airways officially open. The Ministry of the Economy has signed the memorandum of understanding proposed by the German giant of the skies thus starting the exclusive discussion to find an agreement that allows the Frankfurt carrier to enter the tricolor airline with a minority stake. This was confirmed by the dicastery itself after hours of rumors that anticipated the move. No other details on the ongoing discussion will be disclosed, underlines the Treasury.

The document

On the afternoon of January 18, Lufthansa sent the Memorandum of Understanding to the MEF, now the sole shareholder of Ita Airways. In the document that already bore the signature of the German company – as revealed by the Courier — 6 weeks of exclusive negotiations are proposed for the agreement to then be submitted to the various regulatory authorities, in Italy and Europe, starting with the Directorate General for Competition in Brussels.

The capital increase

With the signing of the Italian counterpart in the last few hours – after the evaluation of the MEF technicians on the consistency with the December dpcm – negotiations have started. The Germans would like to enter Italy through a reserved capital increase, with an estimated value of 250-300 million euros, for 40% of the airline. In a second step, Lufthansa’s goal of exploiting the option to take over the other 60%.

The negotiations

A few days ago, Minister Giancarlo Giorgetti – who has personally started following the Ita dossier since he took office – explained that after signing the memorandum, a negotiation phase will begin with respect to the requests of the Italian government and those business projects of Lufthansa. If the two projects are consistent – he added – a very important reality could be born, also to the benefit of the Italian economy.

The timings

As for timing, the minister underlined that it takes a few weeks to do things well, confirming on one side of the month and a half of exclusive negotiations that there will be between MEF and Lufthansa and further weeks (at least 8-10) that could request the assessments of the EU Antitrust on the effects that the Italian-German marriage could have on market dynamics and any corrective measures to be taken, such as the release of some slots at Milan Linate and Rome Fiumicino.

Ita’s accounts

Ita Airways — officially Italia Trasporto Aereo Spa — which took off on 15 October 2021 in place of Alitalia, has 66 aircraft, just over 3,550 employees, transported just over 10 million people in the last year and closed with a negative EBITDA for about 460 million euros. So far it has had two injections of liquidity from the state (specifically the Treasury) of 700 million in 2021 and 400 million at the end of November 2022. The third tranche of 250 million euros remains for the public coffers.

The German giant

Lufthansa the main company of the homonymous group – which includes the Swiss Swiss, the Austrian Austrian Airlines, the Belgian Brussels Airlines, the German-Maltese Eurowings, the Italian Air Dolomiti, Technik and Cargo -, has 108 thousand employees, transported in the 2022 about 103 million people according to estimates of Courier thanks to a fleet of around 700 aircraft (excluding around fifteen for cargo) and forecasts an adjusted profit before interest and taxes of around 1.5 billion euros.