But Mr Scaroni plans to double Enel's 10% share of the domestic gas market by 2009.
Enel's workforce has been halved in the past ten years, to around 52, 000 employees in Italy.
Acciona made a hefty profit by selling on to Enel, an Italian energy firm, last year.
Enel's shares have languished and are now worth around one-fifth less than at flotation.
According to Mr Debenedetti, the government held the whip hand until it floated part of Enel.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, it has proved impossible for Enel and the municipalities to agree on prices.
The chief executive posts at Eni and Enel are both in the hands, ultimately, of the government.
Dierckx also likes Italy's Enel (nyse: EN - news - people ), another Forbes 2000 company.
In arranging a marriage between Gaz de France and Suez, the French government has pre-empted a bid from Enel.
Italian police allege 11 people, including Sawiris, were involved in illegal kickbacks related to the Enel sale of Wind.
Meanwhile, red tape is holding up dozens of applications to build new generating plants that might compete with Enel.
Worse, one of Italy's flagship sell-offs, the flotation of Enel, its electricity monopoly, has been badly mishandled (see article).
Minority shareholders might approve of the new managers, especially at Enel where Franco Tato, the outgoing boss, was a controversial figure.
Another failing is that the government botched its chance to introduce genuine competition in electricity before it decided to sell Enel.
In Italy, Mr Berlusconi has recently imposed new managers at Enel and Eni, Italy's former state-owned electricity and oil monopolies respectively.
ECONOMIST: Privatisation in Europe: Coming home to roost | The
You also have tobacco concern BAT UK, mobile phone company Nokia, publisher Wolters-Kluwer and utilities like Centrica, Endesa and Enel, UBS says.
Enel, Italy's biggest power company, was one of the winners in the epic fight for Endesa, Spain's energy giant, earlier this year.
Even without Enel, Dierckx likes Suez for its exceptional operating performance and the promise in its proposed merger with Gaz de France.
No wonder, then, that Enel has invested in several Russian gas fields.
Electricity prices in Italy, which are set by Enel, the market leader, remain as much as 40% higher than in the rest of Europe.
Last month, Sharp and the Italian utility ENEL agreed to build a solar-power plant in Italy, allowing ENEL to sell large volumes of sun-generated energy.
Chicco Testa, Enel's chairman, says distribution should have been properly sorted out when Enel was entirely state-owned and before the local companies had been floated.
He believes that the government's incompetence has handed Enel overweening power.
Enel's ratio of 800 customers per employee compares poorly to, say, Spain's utility average of 2, 000, says Chris Rowland of Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein, an investment bank.
Italy has accused France of protectionism over a controversial deal to merge Gaz de France and Suez, which was a takeover target for Italian firm Enel.
Mr Conti hopes that Terna's shares will be viewed less like Enel's shares than its bonds, which were traditionally part of every widow's and orphan's portfolio.
ON's bid for Endesa was announced, Enel signalled that it wants to buy a stake in Electrabel, and may even launch a hostile bid for Suez itself.
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