Lufthansa seeks to persuade EU regulators over ITA stake buy

By Foo Yun Chee

BRUSSELS (Reuters) - Lufthansa executives and lawyers will attend a day-long hearing in Brussels on Friday to try to convince EU antitrust regulators to clear the company's bid for a minority stake in Italian rival ITA Airways.

Lufthansa last week submitted remedies to address the EU competition watchdog's concerns about its 325-million-euro ($346 million) bid for a 41% stake in state-owned ITA, the successor to Alitalia.

So far, the remedies are little changed from an earlier package the Commission rejected as insufficient, although Lufthansa can add remedies following the hearing, people familiar with the matter have told Reuters.

Apart from the Lufthansa executives, who arrived in Brussels early on Friday, the closed-door meeting will be attended by lawyers for IAG, Condor Airlines, pan-European consumer group BEUC and travel lobby group eu travel tech.

Guillaume Loriot, the European Commission's deputy director general for mergers, and lawyers as well as officials from national competition agencies will also be there.

The carrier disagrees with the watchdog's decision to discount budget airline Ryanair as a rival and its insistence that only direct long-haul flights and not indirect long-haul flights should be taken into consideration in the investigation.

($1 = 0.9395 euros)

(Reporting by Foo Yun Chee; editing by Barbara Lewis)

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