The change of the guard between the historic Alitalia and the newly created ITA as Italian flag carrier is less than a month away, but the situation is far from defined, airlinegeeks.com reported. Alitalia is going through its bankruptcy procedure and will stop flying on Oct. 15; on the same date, new state-owned carrier Italia Trasporto Aereo (ITA) will take over some of its routes and will begin its adventure with 52 aircraft and 2,800 employees, putting it at roughly half the size of its predecessor.
Italy
Read more
Italy is making Covid-19 health passes mandatory for all workers in the private and public sectors, in one of the toughest vaccine-promoting measures adopted by any major Western country, the Wall Street Journal reported. Prime Minister Mario Draghi’s government passed a decree Thursday requiring workers, including those who are self-employed, to have a digital certificate known as a green pass. This shows a person has been fully vaccinated, has recently recovered from Covid-19 or has freshly tested negative for the virus.
Read more
The European Union’s competition watchdog on Friday cleared an injection of Italian government funds into new national flag carrier ITA, and said the company would not be held accountable for illegal state aid given to its predecessor Alitalia, the Associated Press reported. Just a month before ITA takes to the skies, the European Commission — which polices anti-trust and competition issues in the 27-nation EU — said capital totaling 1.35 billion euros ($1.6 billion) that Italy intends to grant the new venture is in line with market conditions and cannot be considered as illegal state aid.
Read more
UniCredit and Italy’s Treasury are set to extend discussions over the sale of state-owned bank Monte dei Paschi di Siena beyond an exclusivity deadline on Wednesday, Reuters reported. Italy’s second-largest bank agreed at the end of July to start exclusive talks to evaluate buying “selected parts” of Monte dei Paschi (MPS), which is 64% owned by the Treasury following a 2017 bailout. The two parties agreed to guidelines for an accord at the time stating a deal must leave UniCredit’s capital reserves unaffected and boost its earnings per share by at least 10%.
Read more
The government of Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi is preparing its first full annual budget with a view to keeping up extra spending even with the economy rebounding faster than expected, Bloomberg News reported. Finance Minister Daniele Franco’s staff are working on a new fiscal law worth about 20 billion euros ($24 billion) to sustain measures supporting families and businesses during the pandemic, according to officials familiar with the matter who declined to be identified discussing confidential plans.
Read more
When Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi returns from his brief summer break one of the thorniest items on his "to do" list will be finally fixing the woes of the world's oldest bank, Monte dei Paschi di Siena (MPS), Reuters reported. The Tuscan lender's decline has tarnished Draghi's record ever since 2008 when, as Bank of Italy chief, he approved its purchase of rival Antonveneta at an inflated price that analysts say contributed to its financial meltdown.
Read more
Italy's Banca Monte dei Paschi di Siena (MPS) has further reduced its legal claims to 4.9 billion euros ($5.8 billion), a slide on the Tuscan bank's website showed, marking another step in Rome's efforts to reprivatise the ailing lender, Reuters reported. MPS initially faced some 10 billion euros in legal risks, seen as one of the main hurdles to Italian Treasury's plans to cut its 64% stake in the bank by mid-2022, as agreed as part of a 2017 state bailout.
Read more
Dozens of Sicilian towns are facing bankruptcy due to the cost of cleaning up the volcanic ash left by Mount Etna, which has been erupting regularly since February, The Guardian reported. The Italian government on Monday allocated €5m to compensate several villages struggling to pay to get rid of the volcanic cinders, the cost of which can reach more than €1m with every eruption. “The situation is very serious,” said Alfio Previtera, a council official in the town of Giarre, one of the villages most affected by Etna’s ash.
The new airline being created to replace the long financially ailing Alitalia will take off on Oct. 15 with its first flights, the Italian Economy Ministry announced on Thursday, the Associated Press reported. In a statement, the ministry said the new company, ITA, will be fully operating on that date, following the positive outcome of discussions with the European Union’s executive commission. Alitalia’s last flights apparently will operate on Oct. 14.
The COVID-19 pandemic hit Italy especially hard, killing more than 127,000 people and sending the European Union’s third-largest economy into a devastating tailspin. Yet out of that tragedy may come solutions for decades-old problems that have held back growth and productivity — and with them, a new sense of stability for the euro, the currency shared by 19 of the European Union’s 27 members, the Associated Press reported.
Read more