Veteran cashed in at right time December 22, 2011 WILLIE Walsh aside, you won’t find many men who have spent more of their life involved with airlines than former BMI-owner Sir Michael Bishop. Sir Michael joined what was then Mercury Airlines as a baggage handler in 1963, a year before it was taken over by British Midlands Airways. By 1969 he was general manager [...]
IAG seals bmi takeover December 22, 2011 British Airways owner IAG announced a deal to buy German rival Lufthansa’s UK unit bmi for £172.5m in cash, and said jobs would go as part of an urgently-needed restructuring of the loss-making carrier. Lufthansa has the option of selling the airline’s ‘bmi regional’ and ‘bmibaby’ units before the deal completes, and IAG will pay [...]
WHAT THE OTHER PAPERS SAY THIS MORNING December 19, 2011 FINACIAL TIMES NETWORK RAIL WARNED OVER BONUSES Senior management at Network Rail should forget about bonuses next year, Justine Greening, the transport secretary, said on yesterday. She was speaking after the Office of Rail Regulation (ORR) found that the owner of Britain’s railway infrastructure had failed to meet its punctuality targets and was in breach [...]
Virgin wades back into the fight for BMI December 12, 2011 VIRGIN Atlantic has muscled into the auction for BMI, a month after British Airways parent IAG agreed to buy the airline. Lufthansa, which owns BMI, said yesterday it has also reached an agreement in principle to sell the carrier Virgin, stressing that its deal with IAG had not been exclusive. Virgin, which has shown interest [...]
WHAT THE OTHER PAPERS SAY THIS MORNING December 11, 2011 FINANCIAL TIMES TNK-BP WARNED ON LEGAL ACTION Two of the independent directors in TNK-BP, the Russian joint venture of BP, warned the board that legal action by the company against either set of shareholders could destabilise the group, according to a letter seen by the Financial Times. In the letter addressed to Mikhail Fridman, TNK-BP’s [...]
Germans eye stake in UK’s air controller December 11, 2011 GERMAN air traffic controller Deutsche Flugsicherung (DFS) is preparing to make a bid for the government’s stake in British equivalent Nats, according to reports. The state-owned German business is believed to have approached London investment banks earlier this month about advising on a deal to acquire the government’s 49 per cent stake in Nats, which [...]
Airlines say air tax talks were a sham December 6, 2011 AIRLINES lined up to condemn the government’s stance on air travel yesterday, calling the government’s consultation on air passenger duty “a sham and a waste of taxpayers’ money”. The Treasury confirmed yesterday that the levy on passengers would jump by eight per cent in April, despite a massive lobbying effort by the airlines, who argue [...]
X FACTOR JUDGE IS THE LAST MAN AT THE BAR AT IRELAND FUND BALL December 4, 2011 CITIGROUP managing director Basil Geoghegan proved his stamina when he became the eighteenth Irishman to successfully scale Mount Everest earlier this year. But even he is no match for X Factor judge Louis Walsh, who was the last man standing at the Ireland Fund of Great Britain’s tenth winter ball at The Savoy on Saturday [...]
American Airlines goes into Chapter 11 after deal with pilots falls through November 29, 2011 AMERICAN Airlines and its parent company AMR Corp filed for bankruptcy yesterday after failing to win a labour deal with pilots and suffering from mounting fuel costs. AMR had been the only major US carrier to avoid bankruptcy in the past decade. Its rivals used bankruptcy to restructure their labour agreements and cut costs. That [...]
WHAT THE OTHER PAPERS SAY THIS MORNING November 27, 2011 FINANCIAL TIMES PLEA TO BRUSSELS OVER AUDIT SHAKE-UP The heads of several midsized audit networks have issued a last-ditch appeal to the European Commssion not to dilute sweeping proposals aimed at reducing the dominance of the four biggest accountants and improving audit quality. In a joint interview with the Financial Times, the chief executives called [...]