Australia sees post-SARS travel business recovery
Sydney: The chief of Australia's biggest airport said Monday a slump in travel sparked by the SARS outbreak in Asia has bottomed out and that arrivals are starting to increase. Sydney Airport Corp. chief executive Max Moore-Wilton said the airport is recovering from a downturn in business because of severe acute respiratory syndrome. International passenger traffic through Sydney fell 14 per cent in April and 18.5 per cent in May from a year earlier. ``We're starting to see an improvement in the numbers but it will take some time for the airlines to put on more capacity,'' he said, without elaborating. ``I'm optimistic that things will continue to improve from now. We seem to have bottomed out.'' Hong Kong and Singapore becoming virtually free of SARS and China reporting fewer new cases is good news for the airport, Moore-Wilton said. Macquarie Airports bought Sydney's airport from the government for 5.6 billion Australian dollars (US$3.7 billion) last year.
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Vivendi sifts bids for US media empire
New York: Media giant Vivendi Universal set to work sifting through bids for its US entertainment empire on Monday in a multibillion-dollar auction of some of Hollywood's best-known assets. The French-American group expects to receive five bids for the Universal film, TV and theme park business -- known as Vivendi Universal Entertainment (VUE) -- by as early as the end of play on Monday, a source familiar with the matter said. The auction is expected to yield more than $10 billion. Bidders include Kirk Kerkorian's Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Inc; John Malone's Liberty Media Corp ; General Electric Co , which owns the NBC television network; and groups led by the former owner of the Universal business Edgar Bronfman Jr and by Los Angeles billionaire Marvin Davis. "We've received most of the bids at this point," a US-based source said. "And we expect to have five by the end of the day." Another source familiar with the matter said the bids had so far been in excess of $10 billion.
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BA rejects Virgin's offer, says Concorde won't fly
London: British Airways Plc spurned a five million pound ($8.4 million) bid for its Concorde aircraft from rival Virgin Atlantic Airways on Sunday, and said it would retire the supersonic jet as planned in October. "Concorde is not for sale. Our position is absolutely unchanged on that," a British Airways (BA) spokeswoman said. "We're clear that Concorde will not fly commercially beyond October 2003." Earlier on Sunday, Virgin raised its bid for BA's five remaining Concorde aircraft to five million pounds from its previous offer of just five pounds. "We have operators ready to help us keep it flying and would serve New York, Barbados and Dubai, a new destination for the plane," Virgin chairman Richard Branson said in a statement. A joint British-French venture, Concorde first took off in 1969 and can fly at twice the speed of sound, or around 2,100 kilometre per hour.
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No plans to make phones in India: Nokia
Singapore: Finnish mobile phone giant Nokia has ruled out any immediate plans to establish a manufacturing or assembling unit in India to cater to its growing market in the country. "We are catering not just to the Indian market. We are a global player and we decide our strategy keeping in mind the needs of our global market," Nokia vice-president sales South East Asia Pacific (SEAP) Tyler McGee said. "We have two manufacturing units - one in China and other in South Korea and they are able to meet the demands," he added. McGee, however, was quick to add that Nokia was committed to the Indian market. "We have our infrastructure and research and development facility in India and we would review our policy depending upon market demands." Asked about introducing cheaper mobile phones for low end users, he asserted that Nokia was already catering to such users in countries like India, Vietnam and other developing markets through various affordable handsets, including Nokia 3315. Admitting that grey market existed in Asia, McGee said, "we are not the police. We cannot check that. But we will certainly work with the local authorities to convince the customers that they should buy handsets only from authorised dealers."
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