Three interested in Alitalia

photo by WTL photos

Italian Prime Minister Romano Prodi recently said that Air France/KLM, Lufthansa, and Italian domestic carrier Air One were interested in making a bid for struggling Alitalia. (Previously interested Aeroflot has already quit the bidding.) All bidders have until December 6 to make a non-binding offer. In an interview with the German newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung, Lufthansa CEO Wolfgang Mayrhruber said that "Alitalia has big and barely manageable problems. We are studying whether we can find a recipe (to fix these) and make a bid."

It should be pointed out that Alitalia is losing about 1 million euros a day and is affected by frequent strikes (both inside and outside of the company). If one of those airlines is going to make a bid for Alitalia, they'll have to deal with "big and barely manageable problems" indeed.