One of the last great national flagships in the sky may soon lose its independence.

But under which roof does Alitalia's successor company, ITA Airways, which is still state-owned today, come? This Monday, the two prospective buyers will submit their takeover bids.

Behind this are two very different consortia: On the one hand, Lufthansa together with the shipping company MSC, which was previously considered the favourite.

The American fund company Certares is also still in the running.

She wants to work with the airlines Delta Airlines and Air France-KLM, but they are not part of the bidding consortium and therefore do not want to spend any money.

Christian Schubert

Economic correspondent for Italy and Greece.

  • Follow I follow

The Italian government is playing poker up to the last minute before the submission deadline, which it has set for midnight this Monday.

Another option is that the government still declares the offers unsatisfactory and thus forwards the issue to the next executive branch.

This possibility was mentioned in government circles, the Italian daily newspaper “Corriere della Sera” claims to have learned.

Draghi wants to make a decision

Snap general elections will be held in Italy on September 25th.

But Prime Minister Draghi has said clearly that he will make the decision.

According to current polls, a coalition of right-wing national and conservative parties is in the lead, with some representatives preferring a national solution.

Such attempts have repeatedly failed in the past.

ITA Airways is running out of time;

although the airline has shrunk sharply, it only made a small profit in June and is facing a difficult autumn and winter.

That is why the management and all the important trade unions are pushing for rapid privatization and are making little secret of their sympathy for the Lufthansa consortium.

"Anyone who knows the market even a little knows that ITA cannot do it alone," said the general secretary of the Uiltrasporti trade union, Claudio Tarlazzi, recently.

“The worst thing that can happen to the ITA is that it gets caught in the meat grinder of the election campaign.

Because then the topic will “only be treated in the interest of a few parties,” said the trade unionist.

Lufthansa, together with the shipping company MSC, wants to offer around 850 million euros for 80 percent of ITA Airways, according to Italian aviation circles;

the rest should remain with the Italian state.

Certares, on the other hand, only wants to put 600 to 650 million euros on the table, but is only aiming for 60 percent, with 40 percent for the Italian public sector.

While Certares does not have an airline as a consortium partner, the greater government influence could be a plus from an Italian perspective.

It is said that there are forces in the Ministry of Finance in particular who do not like the loss of a say and have caused delays in the past few months.

Certares reportedly wants to give the Treasury more weight on the board of directors and in electing senior management.

At the beginning of August, Rome surprisingly declared the offers in the course of the privatization process that had been going on since the beginning of the year to be insufficient.

The price of the most recent MSC-Lufthansa offer does not differ or differs only slightly from the offer submitted at the beginning of July;

in other areas, however, there could be concessions.

According to the offer, the shipping company MSC - which is based in Geneva but belongs to the Italian family Aponte - should get 60 percent of ITA and Lufthansa 20 percent.

The offer can therefore be regarded as Italian.

The MSC-Lufthansa offer is also considered superior in terms of criteria such as flight routes, employment, airport development and freight traffic.