Ex Ilva, Palazzo Chigi's Plan B focuses on Arvedi and Qatar Steel

The government misses yet another appointment with the rescue of the former Ilva. Even the promise to close the painful asset sale process by April remained unfulfilled, given the difficulty of reaching a convincing conclusion to negotiations with one of the two international players that are officially interested: the American fund Flacks Group and the Indians of the Jindal international.

There have been no decisive steps forward in recent weeks. On the contrary, the precarious (to say the least) financial reassurances provided by Flacks, which is even asking the state for a 500 million vendor loan, and the conditions set by Jindal, both in terms of incentives and the revision of the Integrated Environmental Authorisation, have ended up complicating the assessments of the extraordinary commissioners and the Ministry of Enterprise and Made in Italy. And all this is increasingly inducing the Council presidency to prepare a plan B, a sort of exit strategy in case both negotiations fail.

Hence, in the last few days, an old option, this time of Italian origin, or rather the entry of the Arvedi group, has resumed its prominence. However, it is an option that would require another procedural acrobatics. Basically, if the extraordinary commissioners were to ascertain the impossibility of successfully closing the ongoing discussions with Flacks and Jindal, the current tender would end without an award. And it would be formally necessary to open another one, to allow Arvedi to come forward officially at that point, with revised conditions. And, probably, with an enlarged team. In industrial circles, there is talk of a possible alliance with a foreign industrial partner, and the main suspect seems to be the Qatar Steel group, which was reportedly sounded out by the government during the last institutional mission to the Gulf countries. An international financial fund could then be added to the alliance.

We shall see. For now, together with the number of surveys, more or less concrete negotiations and solid or bold financial hypotheses, what is increasing is the bill for the state since the Riva family era ended 13 years ago. With the recent publication of the implementing decree of the Ministry of Enterprise that has released the last loan, from 149 million euros, the final balance - between financing, contributions, redundancy funds, commissioners' fees and consultancy - has broken the wall of 3.6 billion.