The sale of Alitalia's flight operations to a private Italian investor group cleared its last hurdle on Thursday when the European Commission announced that an independent report had confirmed the operation was at market prices.
The report was from a monitoring trustee appointed by the Italian government with the approval of the European Union executive.
It was the last condition necessary for Compagnia Aerea Italiana (CAI) to buy Alitalia after Italian anti-trust authorites approved the operation on Wednesday.
The EC commissioner for transport, Italy's Antonio Tajani, said the EU executive had received the monitoring trustee's first report on Wednesday and that it ''confirmed that the sale of Alitalia's operations to CAI was in line with current market prices''.
He added that the trustee would continue to monitor all aspects of the sale and the creation of a new national carrier.
''However, this first report was the most important because it verified that the 1.052-billion-euro offer from CAI respected market conditions,'' Tajani said.
ITALY'S ANTI-TRUST AUTHORITY GIVE CONDTIONAL GREEN LIGHT.
Italy's anti-trust watchdog on Wednesday gave a conditional green light to the sale but reserved the right to confirm its approval once Alitalia's future owners choose a foreign partner.
Air France-KLM and Germany's Lufthansa are considered to be the front-runners to be Alitalia's partner.
The authority's approval was needed because CAI intends to merge Alitalia's flight operations with those of Italy's biggest private airline Air One, whose owner Carlo Toto is one of CAI's founding members
The conditions imposed by the anti-trust authority included the guarantee that 10% of the tickets issued by the new carrier be sold at the same price as the cheapest which Alitalia and Air One offered last year on the same route.
This to protect passengers from ''any risk of unjustified prices increases after the merger,'' the watchdog said.
The authority also imposed the condition that the new airline set up a toll-free phone number to resolve problems for passengers stemming from flight cancellations or serious delays.
OFFICIAL SALE SET FOR DECEMBER 12.
The official sale of Alitalia's flight division to CAI is set to take place on December 12 and the 'new' national carrier is expected to officially take off in the first half of January, after the Christmas holiday period.
Alitalia's profitable flight activities were able to be spun off and sold thanks to changes made to Italy's bankruptcy laws this past summer.
Once the flight division is sold, Alitalia's other activities will be sold or liquidated to help pay for the national carrier whopping debts of over two billion euros.
CAI, created in August after the bankruptcy law change, is headed by Piaggio Chairman Roberto Colaninno who brought in Piaggio CEO Rocco Sabelli to hold the same job in the new company.
CAI's other partners include Pirelli chief Marco Provera Tronchetti, the Ligresti insurance family, the Benetton family and Bellavista Caltagirone family, which through its company Acqua Marcia offers handling and maintenance services in five national airports, including Milan's Malpensa.
Another founding member is Italy's second-biggest bank, Intesa SanPaolo, which had initially drawn up a rescue plan for Alitalia for the government which later was used as the blueprint for CAI's business plan for a new national carrier.
