Italy may have earned a bad name for changing the rules to rescue its corporations, but in these straitened times Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi's bespoke bailout of airline Alitalia puts him in illustrious company.

Manoeuvres like last month's change to Italian bankruptcy law for companies providing a public service, and suspension of antitrust rules, have typically won scant approval from the international investing community.

Italian government bonds yield about 70 basis points more than German paper, one of the highest risk premiums in the eurozone. According to the IMF, Italy attracted about €28 billion in new foreign direct investment in 2007, equivalent to 1.9 per cent of GDP. That compares with about 5.8 per cent of GDP for France and 4.2 per cent of GDP for Spain.

But where before the credit crunch, the rallying cry championed by financial powers led by the US was a market-led government-light pursuit of profit, now in other economies struggling with the disconnection in credit markets, pressure is mounting on governments to intervene.

"What has been done for bailing out Alitalia is a slap in the face of all free-market, rule-of-law, separation-of-powers norms and practices," said Carlo Alberto Carnevale-Maffe, a professor at Bocconi University's business school.

"But it is widely popular. In bad times of uncertainty, nation-states provide quick and cheap (so to say) reassurance to the disoriented many."

The risk for Italy was not systemic - like that faced by the US government in seizing control of mortgage finance companies Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in what could be its biggest ever bailout.

And Italy is not alone in acting unilaterally to preserve perceived strategic interests. France stepped in to help once-struggling engineering firm Alstom, Britain rescued building society Northern Rock and even the US was accused of protectionism for warding off Dubai's DP World from its port terminals.

But Italy's government, which owns 49.9 per cent of the floundering carrier, did act radically: It changed the laws to set up the rescue by a group of Italian investors, after a sale to Air France-KLM failed.

The deal is one of a line of corporate rescues pulled together with clever rule changes by Italy's political and financial elite, fulfilling an election pledge from Berlusconi to find Italian buyers for a carrier no-one seemed to want.