Poste Italiane to weigh joining Alitalia consortium
Poste Italiane could consider joining an Italian consortium to rescue Alitalia if doing so makes commercial sense, its chief executive officer told Reuters.
Poste Italiane relies on 16 daily flights, some operated by Alitalia, to transport its mail, and Italian media have suggested it might be interested in the airline’s cargo business. Poste operates its own cargo carrier Mistral Air.
CEO Massimo Sarmi, however, cautioned that the postal group, which itself is among state assets that could be privatised, has not been yet been approached to join the proposed group and that it was still too early to decide on it.
He stressed that any decision to pick up pieces of the cargo business or to be part of a consortium would be based on business considerations.
Sarmi said finding a plane or crew to deliver mail was not difficult, but the tricky part was in ensuring that the cargo flights were filled to capacity so as to make commercial sense.
Poste Italiane itself has long been considered a leading candidate for privatisation.
But unlike state-controlled Alitalia, which is on the verge of bankruptcy, Poste has reversed decades of losses thanks to a strategy of diversifying out of the slow-growth mail business into more lucrative sectors like banking and telecoms.
The group reported a 25 percent rise in annual profit earlier this year, and Sarmi said he estimated it has an equity value of about 14 billion euros ($21.80 billion), double that of a few years ago.
In the event it is privatised, Sarmi reiterated that he prefers a stock market listing of the Poste Italiane group as a whole, rather than just its banking division.
But before deciding on whether to list the company on the market, Italy’s new centre-right government must decide this month whether to renew Sarmi’s term at the helm of the group.
