It would scarcely have been thought possible, but a phoenix has risen. The Italian dairy products and food giant Parmalat is looking forward to stock market quotation in the first half of 2005, a year after it crashed with a debt later calculated at Euro19.5 billion ($201.4 billion) and was dubbed 'the Italian Enron affair'.
The government-appointed administrator and corporate Lazarus, Enrico Bondi, has almost completed his salvage operation. Mr Bondi has won the confidence of the workers at Parmalat headquarters near Parma, often eating with them in the company mess. It strengthened team spirit when the workers feared they would all lose their jobs. Mr Bondi also sent them a New Year message saying that courage, cohesion and strength were still needed to assure their future.
But now, in order to complete his company's resurrection, Mr Bondi has to win the confidence of creditors and investors. Next month, his salvage plan - which involves giving creditors shares in the new, restructured Parmalat - has to be approved.
Approval is expected, but it is not a foregone conclusion - because Mr Bondi is suing many of the banks that are listed as creditors.
Citibank and Bank of America, which are major creditors, are each being sued for damages of up to Euro10 billion. Mr Bondi is suing 45 banks, 35 of which are Italian, he accuses of being co-responsible for the crash. Among the foreign banks are Deutsche Bank, Credit Suisse First Boston and UBS. He is also suing two auditing companies, Deloitte & Touche and Grant Thompson, which are now exchanging mutual recriminations.
Italian law enables companies to try to recover money paid to creditors in the year before a bankruptcy, if it is proved that some creditors were favoured over others. Mr Bondi says that this is precisely what happened and that banks were favoured over Parmalat bondholders.
