Air France-KLM chairman and CEO Jean Cyril Spinetta resigned from the Alitalia board on Wednesday sending flutters through financial circles where his airline is seen as a possible bidder for the Italian one. Air France-KLM issued a statement saying its president could not remain on the Alitalia board after the Italian Treasury recently said it wants to sell a controlling stake in the airline. Spinetta joined the board in 2002 after Air France acquired a 2% interest in the Italian carrier.
The French-Dutch group, which has a commercial partnership with Alitalia, has been talked about as a possible bidder for troubled airline but it has yet to make any announcement on the matter. Air France sources in Paris on Wednesday declined to say whether the company intended to formally express interest in buying Alitalia.
However, the French daily Les Echos quoted Air France-KLM's Executive Vice President Christian Boireau, who is responsible for the commercial division, as saying on Tuesday that his group would present an offer within the next two weeks.
Boireau later backtracked and on Wednesday said "we are of course interested in Alitalia. It may be possible that Air France will submit a bid, if only not to find ourselves left out in the future. In any case, no official decision has been made".
Some observers believe that Air France-KLM will present an offer in order to compete against a possible bid by rival Lufthansa of Germany. Alitalia shares surged as high as 3.86 % in morning trading in Milan amid speculation of an offer. Shares later retreated but were still up over 2.3% in the afternoon.
Paolo Brutti, the head of the Senate's public works committee, observed that Spinetta's move could be a bid to avoid a conflict of interest in view of a possible offer to buy Alitalia. The Italian government decided at the end of last year to sell no less than 30.1% of Alitalia and is accepting initial offers up until January 29. The Treasury has hinted that it may sell all of the state's 49.9% stake in the airline under the right conditions. So far only Italian businessman Paolo Alazraki has already met unions to illustrate his master plan to acquire and rescue Italy's ailing national carrier, which could carry a price tag as high as five billion euros. Other bids are said to be in the works from a group coordinated by the Rothschild Bank as well as from the Aga Khan, whose Italian regional carrier Meridiana recently acquired the low-budget airline Eurofly. There is also speculation that financier Carlo De Benedetti may present a bid through the corporate bail-out fund M&C he helped set up together with a group of leading Italian businessmen, including footwear tycoon Andrea Della Valle. Spinetta's departure, the second from the Alitalia board in a week, leaves the group with only two members and means a board meeting planned for Friday to look at accounts can no longer go ahead. Three directors are needed for a board meeting to be valid. It also means that the company could be placed in the hands of a state-appointed administrator. The remaining board members are President and CEO Giancarlo Cimoli and Treasury representative Giovanni Sabbatini. Recognising the board's predicament, Alitalia unions called off a strike scheduled for Friday but said their concerns over the airline's uncertain future had only been intensified. Unionists said the situation required rapid action by Treasury Minister Tommaso Padoa Schioppa.
Sources close to Alitalia said a shareholders meeting would be held sometime between February 19 and 23 to elect a new board.
