MILAN (Reuters) – Italy’s state railways company will remain under state control, Transport Minister Matteo Salvini said on Wednesday, after the company’s CEO said he was considering opening it up to private investors.
“I deny any sell-off (plans for the company)”, Salvini said during question time in the Senate, the upper house of parliament. “No such proposal is on my desk. Control (of the company) has been and will remain public,” he added.
The CEO of Ferrovie dello Stato, Stefano Donnarumma, had said on Sept. 7 he was “ready to consider opening up the company’s capital to investors”.
“A bourse listing is usually a consequence of such a process. I wouldn’t speak of flotation per se, but of opening up the capital,” Donnarumma said.
The president of Italy’s transport regulator (ART), Nicola Zaccheo, also commented on Wednesday on the eventual partial privatisation of Ferrovie dello Stato.
“A privatisation of the infrastructure is difficult, in such a strategic asset the state must continue to have a central role,” he said, presenting ART’s annual report.
Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s right-wing government has decided to sell stakes in several state-controlled companies since it took office in 2022.
On Tuesday, it adopted a decree allowing the Treasury to sell a stake of up to 14% in postal service operator Poste Italiane, while maintaining the company under state control.
(Reporting by Sara Rossi, editing by Alvise Armellini and Emelia Sithole-Matarise)
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