Lufthansa is close to clinching a deal with the Italian Treasury to buy a 40% stake in state-owned ITA Airways, a source told Reuters today, aiming to take full control of the airline in 2026.
The German carrier would pay between 320-330 million euros to purchase the initial minority stake in the Italian firm, said the source, who is close to ITA.
CEO Carsten Spohr was due to meet Italian Economy Minister Giancarlo Giorgetti in Rome on Thursday to finalise talks, which started in January but were extended beyond an initial deadline of April 24.
Lufthansa declined to comment, while the Italian Treasury did not reply to a request for comment. The source was not authorised to talk to the press, so could not be named.
ITA, the successor of Italy's loss-making flagship airline Alitalia, took to the air in 2021 as a state-owned company and posted a loss of around 486 million euros last year due to the lingering effects of the pandemic and rising fuel costs.
Efforts to save Alitalia and subsequently sell a major stake in ITA Airways have proved a headache for successive Italian governments.
Abu Dhabi's state-owned Etihad Airways took a 49% stake in Alitalia in 2014, promising to turn around the troubled airline, but the partnership ended in failure and Etihad lost hundreds of millions of euros.
Last year, Italy picked a group led by US private equity fund Certares, backed by Air France-KLM and Delta Air Lines, for exclusive talks to buy control of ITA but no deal was reached.
In a decree approved in December to facilitate the sale of ITA, Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni's government made clear that another airline must end up controlling the carrier.
