The European Union gave Deutsche Lufthansa its conditional approval to buy a minority stake in ITA Airways, the Italian carrier formerly known as Alitalia, bolstering the German carrier group’s reach in Europe and its exposure to the lucrative Italian market, the Wall Street Journal reported. The European Commission, the bloc’s executive arm, said its approval was conditional upon full compliance with remedies offered by Lufthansa and Italy’s economy and finance ministry to address concerns from competition officials over the deal’s impact on short- and long-haul routes.
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UniCredit SpA is working on three significant risk transfer deals linked to as much as €8.5 billion ($9 billion) of loans to Italian and German companies, Bloomberg News reported. The Milan-based bank is selling two so-called SRTs linked to €3.5 billion of leasing contracts with Italian companies and €2 billion euros of Italian small and medium-sized businesses, said the people, who asked not to be named because the deal is private. UniCredit also plans to issue SRTs linked to as much as €3 billion of loans to German SMEs by the summer.
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Italy's Benetton family is readying plans to address mounting losses at its eponymous clothing retailer, including parting ways with CEO Massimo Renon after four years, two people close to the group said on Monday, Reuters reported. The board of the clothing group is expected to meet on Tuesday to discuss a net loss of around 230 million euros ($250 million) for 2023 which includes impairments, a source with knowledge of the matter told Reuters. That compares with a net loss of 81 million euros in 2022, when revenues totalled 1 billion euros.
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Oaktree Capital Management took ownership of Italy’s Inter Milan, one of the most storied football clubs in Europe, after its Chinese owner defaulted on a loan, Bloomberg News reported. The US fund has taken control of the club as of Wednesday after conglomerate Suning Holding Group Co. failed to repay €395 million ($428 million), Oaktree said in an emailed statement. The collateral backing the debt was a majority stake in the football club, Bloomberg News reported.
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The Bank of Italy warned on Wednesday against fraudulent video messages circulating online, in which artificial intelligence (AI) technology is used to reproduce fake messages from financial authorities and other institutions, Reuters reported. "Such content, known as deepfakes, is also generated using AI to modify real video or audio in order to convey and add credibility to messages that are untrue and shared with the aim of committing fraud," the central bank said.
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Italy’s mounting pile of debt poses an ongoing hazard to the country and its financial system especially if the economy underperforms, its central bank said in a half-yearly stability assessment, Bloomberg News reported. Just weeks since the government unveiled new projections pointing to an increase in borrowings, officials cited prospects for the public finances as “a risk factor.” That’s arguably stronger language than they used in their two financial stability reports last year.
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The euro zone’s second and third-biggest economies are about to pile on debt again after three years of fixing their pandemic-bloated public finances, the International Monetary Fund said, Bloomberg News reported. Both France and Italy will see borrowings as a percentage of gross domestic product rise in 2024 and then keep creeping up over the coming half decade, the fund said in its World Economic Outlook released in Washington on Tuesday.
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The venture capital arm of Italy's Cassa Depositi e Prestiti (CDP) will invest 1 billion euros ($1.1 billion) over the next five years in artificial intelligence (AI) and cybersecurity, the state lender said on Monday, Reuters reported. The government in March had announced its intention to set up an investment fund to promote projects in the AI sector, backed by CDP, as part of its broader push, as chair of the G7, to focus on the impact of AI on jobs and inequality.
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Dealing with the extensive loan guarantees Italy provided to help businesses through the COVID-19 pandemic and energy crisis is proving complex, hampering efforts to fix some companies' debt problems, restructuring experts said, Reuters reported. Under successive emergency measures since 2020, Italy has extended guarantees on 189 billion euros ($205 billion) of bank loans.
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Telecom Italia SpA expects a windfall of about €1 billion ($1.1 billion) from the Italian government after a Rome appeals court ruled in favor of the one-time monopolist in a legal case dating back to the late 1990s, Bloomberg News reported. The state has been ordered to pay back about €530 million plus interest to the phone carrier for licensing fees the company paid which were not actually due, according to a copy of the ruling seen by Bloomberg.
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