“The industrial logic is convincing”

Alfredo Altavilla, Chairman of the Board of Directors of ITA Airways

He worked for Fiat for almost 30 years, most recently as head of the European business.

(Photo: via REUTERS)

Rome The first round of voting for the new president was just underway in the Italian parliament when ITA Airways received the message: The shipping company MSC wants to take over the majority in the new state airline together with Lufthansa. “I am very pleased about this expression of interest,” said Alfredo Altavilla, Chairman of the Board of Directors, to the Handelsblatt on Monday evening.

It is a great success for ITA Airways to have aroused the interest of a “large company like Lufthansa and a large group like MSC” in so few months. ITA Airways only started in mid-October as the successor to the insolvent Alitalia.

The industrial logic of the offer is “very convincing” and “extremely interesting”, emphasized Altavilla. MSC carries three million passengers on cruises every year and needs planes to bring vacationers to the ports. “That’s very important for us because it’s long-haul flights that make money.”

But Altavilla also sees synergies in the freight sector: “Today, cargo is the sector in which the highest profit margins are achieved.”

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A partnership with the largest cargo company in the world would allow ITA Airways to “enter cargo transport as a protagonist”. This could also upgrade Milan Malpensa Airport, which has always played an important role in the Italian cargo business.

The chemistry between Carsten Spohr and MSC owner Aponte is right

Altavilla does not want to comment on how the shares of the offer are distributed. “That is part of the talks that MSC and Lufthansa will have.” According to the expression of interest, MSC wants to have the majority. “Lufthansa’s share will be determined during the due diligence process.”

Both interested parties also expressed the wish that the Italian state would remain in the company with a minority stake. “The Italian government must now decide whether to grant MSC and Lufthansa these exclusive talks,” Altavilla said. If it comes to an exclusivity agreement, he considers 90 days to be “a reasonable period of time to reach a conclusion”.

The Italian Gianluigi Aponte founded the shipping company MSC in 1970. The group with more than 465 ships, which is now based in Geneva, is still family-owned. “Projects like this happen when people have a common vision,” Altavilla said.

He is very happy about the “strategic skills” that Lufthansa CEO Carsten Spohr and Gianluigi Aponte “have once again demonstrated” with this project. The chemistry between the two would be right. “Now we hope that the conditions will hold until the end of this adventure.”

ITA Airways could become a member of Star Alliance and Miles & More

If the deal goes through, ITA Airways will also leave the previous aviation alliance Skyteam – in order to then join the Star Alliance, which Lufthansa co-founded. Altavilla also announced that it would like to be part of the Lufthansa miles program Miles & More. Now, however, all the conditions of the offer would have to be checked first. “Today was just a first step. The hard part comes now.”

Right from the start, Altavilla took a two-pronged approach: On the one hand, he had to radically cut the costs of the new airline and stabilize the business under difficult corona conditions. On the other hand, he held talks with potential partners. As early as November, shortly after the restart, Altavilla campaigned aggressively for Lufthansa in an interview with the Handelsblatt and confirmed that there had been initial talks with Spohr.

“It would be wrong to remain independent because we would always be too small compared to the three big airline groups operating in Europe,” he said at the time. Also that he has great respect for Spohr because Lufthansa has managed to successfully integrate other smaller airlines in recent years. “From this point of view, I really admire Lufthansa’s business model,” Altavilla said in November.

It is quite possible that in a few months he will himself belong to the Lufthansa Group – with Rome as the new hub in southern Europe and on top of that as a long-haul charter airline for the cruise industry.

More: Investors are interested in Lufthansa shares of the federal government – even sovereign wealth funds are there

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