The journey of years of negotiations for an international aviation colossus to acquire a part of the Italian state airline has finally come to fruition. The Italian Ministry of the Economy announced this Thursday that it had reached an agreement with Lufthansa for the German company to acquire 41% of Ita Airways, the Italian flag carrier born from the ashes of the old Alitalia, an operation for which it will invest 325 million euros. euro.
The deal began to take shape in January, when Lufthansa submitted a formal offer to acquire a partial stake in Ita Airways to later acquire the remaining parts in the future. It is the third time that Lufthansa tried to enter the capital of the Italian airline, after already planning it with Alitalia in 2009 and in 2019, without success.
After statements about the progress of the negotiations and that the Italian Prime Minister, Giorgia Meloni, and the German Chancellor, Olaf Scholz, studied it in a bilateral meeting at the last G-7 in Hiroshima, the agreement has finally been closed after a meeting in Rome between the Italian Ministry of Economy, until now the only shareholder of Ita, with the CEO of Lufthansa, Carsten Sphor, and with the president of the Italian company, Antonino Turicchi. Lufthansa’s intention is to take over the remaining shares at a later date, and indeed Economy Minister Giancarlo Giorgetti evoked an “integration perspective.” “We are convinced that this decision will allow the air market to develop in the interest of Italy,” he said in a statement.
Now, the agreement must receive the approval of both the Italian Court of Auditors and the Directorate General for Competition of the European Commission. Lufthansa already has Brussels Airlines, Austrian Airlines, Swiss and Air Dolomiti, another Italian company, under its umbrella. Ita is very interested in reinforcing its presence both in Asia and Africa as well as in the American continent through the hub represented by the Roman airport of Fiumicino.
The new Italian state airline took off in 2021 with an investment of 1,350 million from the Italian Government and 52 aircraft, less than half of the historic airline that closed after a scandalous management failure, having been rescued on several occasions and several failed merger attempts . Since then, the Italian Executive has been looking for a commercial partner, and possible offers from Delta, Air France-KLM and the maritime giant MSC have also been studied.
