The highest offer for the minimum 39.9% of Alitalia being sold by the Italian government is less than €0.4 per share according to Italian financial daily MF. This is below the airline’s current share price, which stood at €0.89 on the Milan Stock Exchange at 1250 local time Tuesday, having fallen to a two-week low following the report.
The Italian finance ministry has announced that after assessing their preliminary offers, all three shortlisted bidders in the auction – AP Holdings, Texas Pacific/Matlin Patterson Global Advisers/Mediobanca and Unicredit/Aeroflot – had been admitted to the next round.
Without citing its sources, MF claimed Unicredit/Aeroflot had offered less than €0.4 per share for Alitalia while AP Holdings, which includes Italian airline Air One, €0.1. The Texas Pacific-led consortium had bid close to zero per share but offered to buy Alitalia’s 2002-2010 convertible bonds.
The three groups will be given access to the airline’s books on May 24 and are expected to present binding offers by end-June. Rome has said previously that it wants the winning bidder to pay at least €1.5bn for Alitalia and invest a further €1.5bn in the airline.
In April Aeroflot teamed up with Italy’s biggest bank, Unicredit, to bid for a stake in Alitalia. Unicredit was one of five potential buyers shortlisted by the Italian government to proceed to the second round of the sale process. The government, which owns 49.9% of Alitalia, has invited offers for at least 30.1% of the airline.
Unicredit head of investment banking, Sergio Ermotti, announced on April 2 that Aeroflot would join the bank in a Russian-Italian bidding consortium, in which it would hold a 5% stake and the airline 95%.
The Unicredit-Aeroflot consortium is one of only three bidders now remaining in the running. Italy’s finance ministry had issued a statement confirming that US private equity groups Texas Pacific and Matlin Patterson Global Advisers had pooled their bid and were being joined by Milan-based investment bank Mediobanca, and that the third remaining bidder was AP Holding, managed by Carlo Toto, head of Italian carrier Air One.
Report by Chitra Mogul
