Russian airline needs two more weeks to consider bid - Aeroflot Russian Airlines has decided to delay by two weeks any decision on making an offer for a controlling stake in Italian carrier Alitalia, the Russian Interfax news agency reported on Monday.
Citing Aeroflot deputy director general Aleksander Kanishev as its source, Interfax said the Russian airline was still interested in Alitalia but was unhappy that it could not represent the plan it drew up for this summer's failed auction for the Italian carrier.
At the end of last month, Aeroflot said it would tell Alitalia before November 10 whether or not it was interested in acquiring control of the Italian airline.
This came a week after Aeroflot deputy chief financial officer Mikhail Poluboyarinov said that in the event the Russian airline did decide to make a bid, it would offer up to one billion euros.
The November 10 date was the same Alitalia CEO Maurizio Prato initially gave as the earliest deadline for finding a buyer for the national carrier.
Prato later revised the deadline to mid-November.
The Italian government decided at the end of last year to privatize Alitalia through the sale of most if not all of the Treasury's 49.9% stake in airline.
A first attempt to auction the stake failed this summer after all bidders dropped out because of the conditions imposed by the Treasury.
Prato was then called in to negotiate the direct sale of the Treasury's stake.
In October, Prato drew up a shortlist of possible buyers which included Aeroflot, Air France-KLM, Germany's Lufthansa, Italy's second-biggest airline Air One, the American private equity group Texas Pacific and a consortium led by former Italian Constitutional Court justice Antonio Baldassarre.
Last Thursday Alitalia announced that Baldassarre's consortium had been dropped from the list because it did not have the "necessary requisites".
The next day Baldassarre protested against the decision and announced that the Swiss banking group UBS would back his consortium's bid.
Most pundits see Air France and AP Holding-Air One as the favorites to take over Alitalia.
This because Air France, Europe's largest airline after incorporating KLM, already has a 2% stake in Alitalia and is its partner in the SkyTeam international alliance, while AP Holding-Air One would ensure maintaining Alitalia's Italian 'character'.
On Friday, Italy's powerful pilots' union ANPAC came out in favor of either Air France or Germany's Lufthansa as Alitalia's future partner.
According to the union, "it is essential that a solution be found which places Alitalia inside one of the two leading European alliances. It is absolutely impossible for Alitalia to survive outside the context of two important carriers like Air France-KLM or Lufthansa".
ANPAC added that it would be an illusion to think that Alitalia could in any way "stand alone" and equally compete against the two European giants.
Alitalia is reported to be losing some one million euros a day. It has not posted an operating profit since 1998 and its net debt currently stands at more than 1 billion euros.
