Air France-KLM to merge with Alitalia?
Alitalia can become a part of the air-mastodon Air France-KLM. This is the wish of the CEO of AF/KLM Jean Cyril Spinetta.
Air France-KLM boss Jean Cyril Spinetta have wiped the dust off from the old plans of merging Alitalia with the French-Netherlands giant corporation.
We still feel that the Italian market is very interesting for Air France/KLM. A strategic merger is one possibility that give meaning, but we will have to wait and see what the shareholders of Alitalia decide, says Spinetta according to Børsen.dk.
The plan of a merger with Alitalia has been aired several times before, but was then rejected regarding the chronic weak financial state of the Italian company.
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Eclipz From France, joined Jun 2006, 49 posts, RR: 0 Reply 3, posted (3 years 4 months 1 hour ago) and read 1309 times:
Quoting EHHO (Reply 1): I guess monsieur Spinetta can sort out some more urgent business first:
Forbes: Air France-KLM CEO Spinetta hits turbulence
Hello.
The title of the article is a bit exaggereted right now as Mr Spinetta is not accused of anything but only questioned. But time will tell... maybe... ! Anyway, this is not because he is questionned that he can't run the company.
About the merger, as said before, it comes back regularly so it can be "cancelled" one more time but it's something really serious, not just a quick thought i guess. If it happens it would be reeeeaaaaally interesting... and i think it would bring great changes in Alitalia's fleet...
FlySSC From Lebanon, joined Aug 2003, 6295 posts, RR: 65 Reply 4, posted (3 years 4 months 1 hour ago) and read 1309 times:
This has been discussed to death, since the very begenning of AF & KLM merge process.
Spinetta said and repeated since then that AZ could join AF & KL when, and only when, it will be privatized and completely reorganized which is far from beeing the case.
Nobody, mentally healthy, would invest 1 € in Alitalia by now. AF-KLM Managers are not stupid.They are not going to take the risk to endanger the whole group AFKL (who is doing very fine) by integrating AZ, just to please the Italian Government who doesn't know what to do with this "pain-in-the-ass" of Alitalia.
CHRISBA777ER From Singapore, joined Mar 2001, 4890 posts, RR: 61 Reply 5, posted (3 years 4 months 1 hour ago) and read 1277 times:
Have done a project on this - and AF/KL will NOT touch AZ with a 10-foot bargepole unless they have carte blanche to make the changes necessary to bring it into something that has any chance of one day resembling a profitable company. For this to happen, they would need the approval of the unions to cut thousands and thousands from the workforce, and instigate some really sweeping route/fleet/workforce/services cuts. A foreign-owned company coming in and demanding something like a 35% drop in workforce?
Not going to happen. The shareholders may be keen on the idea and allow the sale, and it should be noted the Italian Govt is obliged to sell off the company into the private sector under the terms of the disputed illegal State-subsidies row so they will likely be keen.
The Unions will not wear it voluntarily. Alitalia has been hamstrung by its notoriously militant unions for years, and these are the main (but not only) blockade in the way of the airline ever being profitable. If I was KL/AF I would consider AZ a big no-no purely for this reason.
The only way it could possibly work is if the company was allowed to go bankrupt, and KL/AF was part of an Italian-led consortium to re-incorporate the airline and take on the debt. Unlikely IMHO.
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