Air France or Lufthansa could be the strategic partner a slimmed-down Alitalia needs to spread its new wings, Italian Transport Minister Altero Matteoli said Wednesday.
A 16-strong Italian consortium is putting together the cash to boost a new Alitalia after its liabilities are dumped into a bad company and Matteoli said either of the two foreign giants ''could become the 17th partner''.
Representatives of Banca Intesa, the Italian bank advising the government on the rescue plan, are in Paris to try to revive Air France's interest in the near-bankrupt airline after its takeover plan was sunk by unions last spring.
The consortium includes financier and Piaggio owner Roberto Colaninno, the Benetton clothing and financing group, financier Marco Tronchetti Provera, the Ligresti and Caltagirone construction and finance groups, the Riva and Marcegaglia steelmakers and Italy's top private airline Air One, which will be the carrier's first operational partner.
The investors are waiting to get the green light after Thursday's cabinet meeting at which changes to Italy's bankruptcy law will be made.
The existing law, crafted in the wake of the Parmalat collapse, allowed the failed dairy giant to stay in business and gradually work its way back from the brink of financial ruin but analysts say Alitalia must be turned around more quickly.
Fiscal expert and former finance minister Augusto Fantozzi, tipped to oversee the bad company, said Wednesday Alitalia was ''likely'' to be put into liquidation Friday.
As for the thorny issue of lay-offs, which sank the Air France deal, Matteoli said ''no one would be left in the street'' but declined to confirm press reports that the estimated 7,000 workers could find new jobs in the post office, tax service and government property agencies.
''It hasn't been decided yet,'' Matteoli said, stressing that government lay-off schemes would be available for any workers while they look for new jobs.
Matteoli and other members of Silvio Berlusconi's centre-right coalition claimed the operation would produce a national champion capable of competing internationally - rather than a subsidiary of Air France and its Dutch partner KLM as envisaged by the deal set up last year by the previous centre-left government.
The transport minister said the Air France deal would have knocked Italian tourism while Daniele Capezzone, the spokesman for Berlusconi's Forza Italia party, said that instead of a ''humiliating sell-off'' the premier had kept his promise to keep Alitalia Italian, confounding his centre-left detractors who have voiced repeated doubt that a consortium would be assembled.
On the other side of the political fence, former finance minister Pierluigi Bersani of the Democratic Party said he wouldn't like to see Alitalia becoming a ''mini-Parmalat'' that could hurt small investors and consumers.
He also warned that the European Union, which is already vetting a loan keeping Alitalia in the air, would look very carefully at any ad hoc change to Italy's bankruptcy law.
''I don't want to see us out of the frying pan and into the fire,'' he said.
Financier Colaninno, the man who engineered Italy's biggest private takeover in 1999, of telecommunications giant Telecom Italia, is expected to be installed as president of the new company on Friday with his right-hand man Rocco Sabelli as CEO.
After the change to the bankruptcy law at a cabinet meeting convened for noon Thursday and the first board meeting of the new Alitalia Friday, a first meeting with unions will ''probably'' take place on Monday, government sources said.
