"After the merger deed has been transcribed in the register of companies, nothing can be done", warns Gabriele Racugno, a lawyer and professor of commercial law, one of the leading experts in corporate operations in Sardinia.
The openings to stop the wedding between the airports of Olbia and Alghero have narrowed, but for the Region - a minority shareholder - there is still some possibility.
On 29 May there will be the extraordinary shareholders' meetings of Geasar and Sogeaal, intending to go all the way despite the various halts collected along the way: the first is that of the regional administration, which is against a marriage that would water down its shareholding in the stopovers, reducing the powers of direction to a minimum. Then that of ENAC, which withdrew its (initially positive) opinion on the merger and announced "further investigations", especially after the first oppositions - and controversies - exploded in the area.
The heart of the story is what insiders call the "exchange ratio". In mergers between companies, it is nothing more than the value attributed to the shares of the companies, after having compared them. A fundamental step that could rewrite the balance of the Sardinian airport sector.
CONTINUITY - The routes of territorial continuity - ie the connections between the island and the airports of Fiumicino and Linate - lose passengers. Never seen such a decline: compared to 2019, the year that is usually taken into consideration for making comparisons (the last one before the Covid apocalypse), the traffic of travelers on the routes between Sardinia and Rome decreased in 2022 by 30 %, while those towards Milan by 28%. In Cagliari airport alone, the only one for which we have data relating to individual flights, 445,000 passengers were lost along the way. But the decline is generalized. And it is likely that the bill will save at least 600 thousand passengers when the statistics of Olbia and Alghero are added.
