The consortium for Alitalia is starting to disintegrate. All the fault of the international crisis. The 16 saviours of the flagship company are short of cash. The top dog Roberto Colaninno had promised to put 150 million euro into CAI, the new company. Not his own money, as is the habit since the time of the takeover bid for Telecom Italia. He was counting on getting the money as a loan like every entrepreneur worthy of respect. The choice was sound. The bank that was due to assist CAI was in fact Lehman Brothers. These bring bad luck.... As soon as they found out in New York, Lehman collapsed after surviving since 1929 and panic was unleashed in the world Stock Markets. Colaninno is looking for other financiers, let’s wait for the next name to pinch ourselves.
According to Corrado Passera, CEO of Banca Intesa, the new Alitalia was due to start on November 1. If it starts next year, it’ll be a miracle. Even now, it’s not known which of the magnificent 16 will present themselves at the meeting on 28 October. It’s possible that to pull out will be Aponte, Emilio Riva’s Ilva and Fossati, but also the Clessidra fund, and even Marcegaglia wanted to give it all up, as reported by il Corriere della Sera. The foreign partner, it’s not yet known who it is and what weighting they will have. The only thing that is clear is that Alitalia has already gone bust, that Air One with which it is due to merge, has a mass of debts and Banca Intesa, the sponsor of the operation, is among the major creditors of both of them.
I am fascinated by the way that Alitalia has been managed. It is the Egg of Columbus. You take a company that has gone bust because of politics and Trades Unions. You divide it into two parts. One with all the debts to be laid onto the tax payers, that is called "bad company". And one without debts, called "good company" that is offered at a bargain price to entrepreneurs without money (Colaninno), State concessionaries (Benetton) or those interested in EXPO 2015 (Tronchetti). People who can sell it on after a bit of time with the appropriate gain to a foreign company that is straight away contributing capital. An example for every Italian. You package up the mortgage repayments, debts with suppliers, losses on the Stock Exchange and the mother-in-law in a bad company and pass that to the State. The house, any credit, the salary, interest you hand over to a good company and you start all over as new.
The Banca Intesa makes it known that “the consortium is of granite”. Never seen a granite consortium. A tombstone yes.