PRESS RELEASE

MARITIME TRANSPORT: ANTITRUST GIVES CONDITIONAL 'OK' FOR MOBY'S ACQUISITION OF TOREMAR

Authorization for the operation is contingent upon a set of measures designed to foster competition in transport services for Isola d'Elba. Moby to yield 6 slots for the Piombino-Portoferraio route

Conditional 'go ahead' for Toremar's acquisition by Moby - the Antitrust Authority reached this decision in a meeting on 19 July 2011, making authorization conditional on a set of measures designed to promote competition for the Isola d'Elba routes. Without these measures the acquisition would create a dominant position for the Piombino-Portoferraio route in the maritime transport sector.

The measures aim to eliminate the entry barriers for the Isola d'Elba route that result from the limited number of possible berthings/departures (a.k.a. slots) from the Piombino port towards Elba and especially Portoferraio. The measures make entry possible for one or more competitors with the minimum efficient size and take into account the slots currently being reserved by the Piombino Port Authority for Moby and Toremar's competitors. The point of the measures is to ensure that both Moby and its competitors are able to provide passenger and vehicle transport services for Piombino-Portoferraio (especially during summertime) that are both technically feasible and economically and commercially viable.

In specific, Moby:

-         shall yield up to 6 slots (time slots allotted for berthings/departures) for the Piombino-Portoferraio route (plus the corresponding slots in the port of Portoferraio) to its competitors, with first priority given to companies who requested these slots last season. The use of these slots shall be confined to the Piombino-Portoferraio route. The yielding of slots to a competitor, however, shall not occur in such a way that the competitor ends up with more slots than Moby. Should the Piombino Port Authority ever make new slots available, Moby's compulsory yielding shall be automatically reduced as long as Moby and Toremar never end up with more than two thirds of the slots earmarked for the Piombino-Portoferraio route;

-         should the slots of an actual or potential competitor ever become unusable due to technical difficulties, the competitor shall be allowed to trade them for contiguous time slots unless this would involve excessive costs for Moby or render its business untenable;

-         new or extra slots shall be excluded from the first round of assignments being organized by the Piombino Port Authority.

The competitors are responsible for indicating the specific slots to be yielded by Moby or exchanged for their own.

Official requests for the slots to be yielded need to be submitted to Moby and communicated to the Antitrust Authority.

The measures shall enter into effect during the current season, within the limits of the technically possible and without the reorganization of supply being allowed to cause any unwarranted damage to consumers.

These obligations shall remain in effect until the 2016 season. Until then Moby shall provide the Antitrust Authority with annual reports on the yielding of slots.

These conditions shall in no way alter Toremar's public service obligations.

The Antitrust Authority has deemed the nature and extent of the measures listed here to be fit to ensure the development of competition in the passenger and freight transport markets to and from Elba and to prevent a possible abuse of dominant position by Moby. Once these measures have been introduced, in fact, the share of slots reserved for Moby and Toremar will drop from 80% to 66%, with the share for Moby alone dropping from about 39% to 24%.

Rome - 22 July 2011