OK to privatise Catania airport

The path to opening up the capital of Sac, the company that manages Catania airport, is entering its decisive phase. The Ministry of Infrastructure and Transport has in fact expressed a favourable opinion on the document relating to the procedure, but has imposed a formal condition: the final go-ahead remains subject to the receipt of any comments from the Ministry of Economy and Finance or to the passage of 30 days without the latter's pronouncement. If no comments are received, the silence-consent mechanism will be triggered, allowing the publication of the expression of interest to proceed directly. The timeframe, in this case, is already outlined, with a possible publication by the second week of April.

The notice for the expression of interest, which represents the first concrete act of the operation, is already ready. The operation envisages the sale of a majority stake in the company, between 51% and 66% of the capital, thus opening up entry to new investors in the management of Etna's airport. The document underlying the procedure has been defined for months and has already incorporated the indications received from the supervisory authorities. In the latest steps, it has been further updated on the basis of the observations made by Enac and the Ministry of Infrastructure and Transport itself, thus completing the technical-administrative process required to launch the operation.

The publication of the expression of interest represents the first operational step in the procedure that will lead to the tender for the entry of new investors in the company that manages Etna's airport. After the collection and verification of the expressions of interest, the process envisages a further step among the public shareholders for the publication of the call for tenders. 'Once this phase is over,' Sac CEO Nico Torrisi explained a few days ago (see Il Sole 24 Ore of 11 March), 'we will return to the shareholders' meeting to obtain authorisation to publish the call for tenders'. At the same time, Sac's partners will also have to complete their own internal administrative steps. 'Each shareholder will have to obtain the necessary authorisations from its own bodies,' Torrisi continued. 'The municipalities, for example, will have to go through the city councils in order to be able to decide on their share.