Possible members of a consortium to rescue ailing national carrier Alitalia dodged questions after a three-hour meeting at advisor bank Intesa San Paolo Monday.
Frustrated reporters managed to catch up with financier Roberto Colaninno and one of his top managers, Rocco Sabelli - a press tip as Alitalia's next CEO - in a bar near the bank's HQ.
''We've come to Milan to see the Duomo,'' said Colaninno, the man who engineered Italy's biggest corporate takeover in 1999 when he and partners bought out telecommunications giant Telecom Italia.
But he let slip that ''we managed to sneak out'' (of the meeting).
The participants, who included investment fund Equinox, the Ligresti group, financier Marco Fossati and shipbuilder Gianluigi Aponte, were equally tight-lipped on their way in.
Only steelmaker Emilio Riva opened up, saying he wasn't interested in the 'Phoenix' rescue plan.
The head of Italy's biggest private airline, Carlo Toto of Air One (Airone), told reporters ''I can't talk, I'm in a hurry''.
Air One is expected to join with a revamped Alitalia, after it ditches its liabilities into a so-called 'bad company', to set up what Italy hopes will be a national champion.
The Phoenix plan is set to be unveiled next month with unions already up in arms about rumoured lay-offs rumoured to exceed those contained in an Air France takeover plan rejected by the unions during last spring's election campaign.
''We're anxiously waiting to see how many lay-offs there'll be,'' CISL union chief Raffaele Bonanni said ahead of Monday's meeting.
The head of CISL, which is Italy's second-biggest union, said the lay-offs of some 2,000 in the Air France plan ''were bound to have risen to at least 7,000'' while the reported job losses in the new plan ''could be recovered if the airline recovers solidity and routes''.
Alitalia personnel will stage an unprecedented symbolic one-minute strike at midday on September 6, flight attendants' union SDL said earlier this month.
The union said it had called the strike amid ''serious concerns'' over workers' futures.
It described possible lay-offs of between 4,000 and 8,000 staff as a ''grotesque lottery''.
Alitalia was put up for sale last year by the previous centre-left government but an offer by Air France-KLM failed in April following opposition from unions and the incoming Silvio Berlusconi administration.
According to inside sources, the new plan calls for the merger of Air One with Alitalia.
The company would be split into two parts: one that would merge the profit-making side of Alitalia with Air One which would handle 65% of the domestic market and another, the 'bad company', which would assume Alitalia's debts and would be liquidated soon after.
This would save new investors from picking up Alitalia's debts, said to be around 1.5 billion euros, and would allow the company to look for a strong international partner.
Berlusconi told party Senators at a dinner earlier this month that the advisor's plan would involve 5,000 lay-offs but said this was the ''lesser evil'' compared to the loss of all 20,000 jobs if the airline went bust.
The premier reiterated his ideas on the layoffs in a radio interview, saying that in fact a deal with Air France would have led to 7,000 job cuts.
''We believe we can manage fewer layoffs than that,'' he said.
Air France-KLM had said they would need to cut 2,100 workers under the failed takeover deal.
Air France-KLM has denied interest in the new plan.
German carrier Lufthansa, which the Italian media is touting as a possible partner, has described the reports as ''speculation''.
