AIRLINES
Qatar Airways ends plans to buy a stake in AA shares
to buy a minority stake in American Airlines.
The Doha-based carrier announced in June it was seeking to take a 10 per cent stake in its fellow Oneworld airline, despite a lack of enthusiasm from American’s management for the move. But Qatar Airways, which owns 20 per cent of British Airways’ parent IAG, has dropped plans for its “proposed passive financial investment” in American. “Further review of the proposed financial investment, taking into account the latest public disclosure of American Airlines, has demonstrated that the investment no longer meets our objectives,” said Qatar Airways in a statement. “Qatar Airways will continue to investigate alternative investment opportunities in the US and elsewhere that do meet our objectives.” American’s CEO Doug Parker had expressed surprise
about Qatar Airways’ original plans to take a shareholding in his company. “While anyone can purchase our shares in the open market, we aren’t particularly excited about Qatar’s outreach,” said Parker in a letter to staff in June. “We find it puzzling given our extremely public stance on the illegal subsidies that Qatar, Emirates and Etihad have all received from their governments over the years.”
EUROSTAR BOOSTED BY ‘ROBUST’ BUSINESS TRAVEL SALES
in the first half of 2017, with corporate passenger numbers up by 5 per cent.
The rail operator’s UK corporate bookings performed even better with a 7 per cent rise in business travellers during the first six months of the year. Eurostar’s overall passenger numbers rose by 1 per cent to 5.04 million compared with 4.97 million during the first half of 2016. Sales revenue rose by 11 per cent to £455 million, although this increase was only 6 per cent when currency
APPOINTMENTS
BoAML appoints new commercial cards head
David Voss as its new head of commercial cards, global transaction services, for Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA). Voss, who is based in London, is responsible for product management, new business growth, sales support and account management across the region.
He joined Bank of America
Merrill Lynch in May and has more than 18 years of
BREXIT
Ryanair puts Brexit ‘contingency’ plans in place
experience in the cards industry, including spells at Airplus and GE Corporate Payment Services.
to deal with the impact of Brexit on its flights. Michael O’Leary, the Irish airline’s CEO, warned that it could move its UK-based aircraft to continental Europe if it does not receive “clarity” on how UK-EU flights will operate after Brexit. “If we do not have certainty
For more appointments, see Movers & Shakers, p150
about the legal basis for the operation of flights between the UK and the EU by autumn 2018, we may be forced to
cancel flights and move some – or all – of our UK-based aircraft to continental Europe from April 2019,” he said. Ryanair is campaigning for the UK to stay in the EU Single Aviation Market. But it warned that if the UK leaves this “open skies” agreement there may “not be sufficient time or goodwill on both sides” to negotiate a separate deal to allow flights to continue from April 2019. “We seek clarity on this issue before we publish our summer 2019 schedule in the second quarter of 2018,” O’Leary, said. “We have contingency plans in place and will, as always, adapt to changed circumstances in the best interests of our customers and shareholders.”
fluctuations are taken into account. Eurostar CEO Nicolas
Petrovic said: “We have recorded good growth in the first six months of the year with a marked increase in traffic from the US and overseas markets.
“This is testament to the enduring popularity of our destinations combined with favourable exchange rates. The outlook for the second half is promising, with a busy summer season and bookings for the autumn up on last year,” he added.
RAIL
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