The Italian government has drawn up new guidelines for the sale of the state's interest in ailing national carrier Alitalia, Economy Minister Giulio Tremonti announced on Friday.
The guidelines are in a decree which will take immediate effect but must then be approved by parliament within 60 days of being signed by President Giorgio Napolitano.
According to Tremonti, the only hope of saving Alitalia is to find a buyer for the Treasury's 49.9% controlling stake in the airline.
In a brief press conference Tremonti also announced that the government had asked Intesa Sanpaolo, Italy's second-biggest bank, to act as its advisor and that the bank ''may or may not'' decide to be part of any group which acquired the airline.
He added that with these new guidelines, which modify current privatization regulations, the government would move to sound out possible buyers.
This will be the third attempt in a year and a half by the government to sell Alitalia, after the previous center-left executive of premier Romano Prodi failed to auction it off last summer and then to sell it directly to Air France before the center right came to power this spring.
The sale to Air France-KLM ha won the approval of the government and the Alitalia board but ran aground over objections by unions, mostly over layoffs, and was then torpedoed when the center right made it clear during the election campaign that it would scotch the deal.
During the press conference Tremonti confirmed that Air France-KLM was definitively out of the picture. The minister gave no indication who a possible partner could be.
Earlier this week both Lufthansa of Germany and Spain's Iberia reiterated that they were not interested in Alitalia, while Aeroflot Russian Airlines admitted it has been in contact with Alitalia but that nothing had come of this.
Tremonti also said he did not believe that Italy will have trouble with the European Union over a 300-million-euro 'bridge' loan the government authorised for Alitalia.
The loan was approved by the outgoing Prodi government, in response to a request from incoming Premier Silvio Berlusconi, but critics claim it was in violation of EU laws on state subsidies.
According to Tremonti, the loan was needed because the airline risked going into liquidation.
Berlusconi has always claimed, even during the election campaign, that a group of Italian investors were ready to come together in a consortium to buy the Treasury's stake in Alitalia, with another airline coming in as a 'strategic' partner.
However, while there has been vast speculation who would be in this consortium, with names ranging from the Benetton family to Fiat, no one has officially stepped forwards.
The only airline which has maintained an interest in Alitalia is Air One, Italy's largest private carrier, which had taken part in the failed auction and lost out to Air France-KLM to be a preferred talking partner in direct negotiations, due to its smaller size.
In both cases air One had been allied with Intesa Sanpaolo.
Alitalia this week confirmed that it posted 495 million euros in losses in 2007, equal to 1.35 million euros a day. However, this was an improvement over its losses of 626 million euros in 2006.
