Acquisitions

US should feel relieved; at least it is not the only one dealing with bankruptcy. Both it and Europe have issues in the airlines sector. American airliners Frontier Airlines Holdings Inc. or ATA declared bankruptcy, while Delta and Northwest will merge in order to avoid such a disaster. Meantime, Italy’s Alitalia is also in a difficult position being forced to take measures in order to avoid running out of business. Alitalia is Italy’s flag career airline with 49.9 percent of its shares under the ownership of the Italian government. Since its foundation in 1946 the airliner had only one year of profit and the rest were marked by big time losses as a consequence labour problems and government and political interference. Mostly if it managed to survive until now it is only due to the fresh capital infused by the government and other organizations. Yet, the European Union had forbidden any further help or grants from the part of the Italian government, thus the option remaining is a privatization of the airliner and a lower political ownership. Air France-KLM Group; an investment group led by businessman and lawyer Antonio Baldassare; and a group composed by the Italian domestic carrier Air One and several banks presented their offers in December 2007. On March 2008 the proposal of Air France-KLM Group was accepted, but on Monday, 21 April, Europe's biggest airline announced dropping its bid and justifying it the fact that the demands of Alitalia’s unions are unreasonable and did not respect the initial agreement. Silvio Berlusconi, the Italian prime minister starting next month, is against Air France’s takeover considering it as being an insult and unless the terms will not be changed, they would prefer an Italian consortium. Meantime, Alitalia’s situation is not getting better and the cabinet must meet and sort things out and keep on flying. More to come…

related story: http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20080421/bs_nm/alitalia_dc;_ylt=AhCbw3nrxeueIslSODbF_lqs0NUE

by Claudia Sonea for PocketNews (http://pocketnews.tv)

PocketNews is a new real-time news broadcaster delivering the latest and hottest news right to your pocket ! With global clients who want to be kept up to date, PocketNews is everyone's way of keeping in touch with the World.<br><br><font size=2>These news are brought to you by CantellTV, its technology partner SigEx Telecom and its founder Chris Cantell. CantellTV is the fastest growing provider of digital broadcasting coupled with enhanced communications, allowing people to easily control, view, upload and share digital content through proprietary interface. CantellTV has relationships with a growing network of international clients delivering millions of videos per day with more than 50,000 new videos uploaded and 200 hours of new TV shows broadcasted daily to a wide range of viewers, from 5 to 7 year olds of LiveCartoons; to 16 to 24 year old active social users of MyJumps; to fortune 50 corporate clients utilizing enhanced broadcasting services. CantellTV is committed to delivering infinite choices to your world of entertainment at the tip of your fingers. Chris Cantell retains consulting arrangements with several pre-IPO companies.</font><br>

edited by Beata biskova

Labels: Acquisitions, CantellTV, Chris Cantell, Christopher Cantell, digital broadcasting, SigEx Foundry, SigEx Telecom