The board of Airbus's parent company, EADS, approved the launch of its new mid-sized aircraft, the A350. But the company will not proceed to draw down launch aid promised by European governments while it hopes for a bilateral settlement of the trade row with America over such subsidies.
NTL, a British cable operator, confirmed it was buying Telewest, a rival, in a deal worth £3.4 billion ($6 billion). The move creates a "triple play" provider (phones, TV and broadband) in Britain's telecoms market that will provide competition to both BT (phones and broadband) and BSkyB (TV).
A subsidiary of Sprint Nextel, America's third-biggest telecoms firm, filed a lawsuit against Vonage and Voiceglo Holdings claiming that the companies had infringed Sprint's patents relating to voice over internet protocol technology. Both Vonage and Voiceglo offer services that enable calls over the internet.
Google and Sun Microsystems threw down a challenge to Microsoft by agreeing jointly to "promote and distribute" their technologies. As a start, Sun will incorporate Google's toolbar into its Java packages, but techies were more excited by the potential for collaboration on OpenOffice, an alternative to Microsoft's Office software.
Electronic firms that back the Blu-ray technology for high-resolution DVDs, notably Sony, received a boost when Paramount Home Entertainment said it would also support the format in addition to supporting HD-DVD, a rival and incompatible format. Last week, HD-DVD had received a boost when Intel and Microsoft said they would be supporting it, not Blu-ray.
Ford and General Motors reported sharp falls in vehicle sales for September. Ford's overall sales fell by 20%, compared with September 2004, and GM's by 24%. Sales of light trucks, which include sport-utility vehicles, shrank by even more as consumers fretted about petrol prices. Meanwhile, GM said it was selling its 20% stake in Fuji Heavy Industries, a Japanese carmaker. Toyota, which reported its best-ever quarterly sales in America, will buy almost half of GM's stake.
Parmalat is laying another claim against a large financial institution for allegedly contributing to its collapse in 2003. It will sue Credit Suisse First Boston for euro7.1 billion ($8.5 billion). The trial of the Italian dairy firm's founder and 15 others on fraud charges connected to the euro14 billion bankruptcy began last week, only to be adjourned until December. This week, Parmalat also began trading on Milan's stockmarket again after it had relisted.
Kazakhstan's government said it would seek "strategic control" of PetroKazakhstan's assets in the country, despite its imminent takeover by China National Petroleum Corporation. PetroKazakhstan's shareholders (the company is listed in Canada) are due to approve the $4.2 billion deal on October 18th. Meanwhile, Lukoil, Russia's biggest oil company, confirmed that it is close to buying Nelson Resources, another Canadian-listed firm that maintains energy assets in Kazakhstan, for $2 billion.
BP issued an assessment on the effects of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita to its business, the first big oil company to do so. The storms swept away $700m in profit for the third quarter and caused the loss of 145,000 barrels a day in oil production—more than analysts had thought. Separately, the Insurance Services Office, a firm that provides data to the insurance industry, estimated that 1.6m American policy-holders would file claims, stemming from Katrina, that would total $34.4 billion.
The Institute for Supply Management's index of business activity in America's services sector fell to 53.3 in September, far below Wall Street's expectations, reflecting concerns over the impact of rising energy costs and the recent hurricanes. However, the ISM's manufacturing index beat forecasts and rose by six points to 59.4. The optimism is fuelled by reconstruction prospects in the Gulf coast region.
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