If productivity at Swissair Group increases fast enough staff reductions can be restricted to voluntary redundancies and transfers, according to Swissair chairman and chief executive Mario Corti in the group's staff magazine "Swissair Group News".

Corti pointed out in the article that the company, which suffered a near SFr2.9 billion ($1.7 billion) loss in 2000, must quickly return to being economically viable in order to clear the group's debts.

After having sold off its Swissôtel business, Swissair is now looking for a buyer for its information technology subsidiary, Atraxis. Corti said he would be happy with either a third party investing or an outright sale of Atraxis.

One part of the Swissair Group under a shadow is its airplane-leasing subsidiary, Flightlease. Corti has always said the unit's financial problems cannot be solved by simply transferring money from one business to the other, but also by cutting back on business activities that need a lot of capital while not contributing strongly to the company's profit.

Looking back at last week's annual general meeting Corti said the special audit approved by shareholders posed no particular problems for his administration.

swissinfo with agencies

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