Microsoft bags the top spot in brand contest February 24, 2010 Microsoft pulled off a rare coup against its deadly rival Google yesterday when it was named the strongest business brand. Google finished fifth after a surprise fall in the rankings, behind Rolls-Royce, and BlackBerry, in the Business Superbrand Top 500 survey. The internet giant held the top spot in 2008 and 2009. Microsoft came second [...]
BA trains 1,000 staff to replace its cabin crew March 3, 2010 BRITISH Airways (BA) will have up to 1,000 staff members fully trained and ready to serve as cabin crew by next week should talks with aircrew to avoid a strike collapse. The commercial airline said up to 6,000 staff members, including pilots, had originally volunteered to work on flights but a smaller number had already [...]
LISTED PRODUCT NEWS March 24, 2010 RBS FLIES BA WARRANTS You can now trade covered warrants on British Airways (BA) and Citigroup with Royal Bank of Scotland. Both put and call warrants are available and for those with long investment horizons, the expiry dates – some as far-out as June next year – should be welcome news. It may also take [...]
BA and unions agree a deal over pensions March 16, 2010 BRITISH Airways and trade unions came to an agreement yesterday on plans to reduce the airline’s £3.7bn pension deficit. The proposals will see staff given the chance to either receive lower benefits and keep their current levels of contribution or opt out to pay 4.5 per cent extra to maintain their current pensions benefit. The [...]
BA strike looms as negotiations crash March 10, 2010 STRIKE talks between British Airways (BA) and Unite have fallen apart after the airline rejected a package of proposals from the union. BA said the proposed 2.6 per cent staff pay cut, which Unite estimated would have saved BA £60m, “fell significantly short” of the £62.m savings they needed. As a result of the failed [...]
EasyJet sees its passenger numbers rise March 4, 2010 THE number of passengers carried by budget airline easyJet in February was 12.3 per cent higher than a year earlier, though the load factor was lower. EasyJet carried 3.39m passengers in February 2009, compared with 3.02m who used the airline in February 2008, according to figures released by the airine yesterday. However the load factor [...]
FTSE ends higher on oil and mining after upbeat US data April 6, 2010 BRITAIN’S top shares closed 0.6 per cent higher yesterday, lifted by firmer commodities after upbeat US data raised demand expectations, while Vodafone fell as Verizon merger talk cooled. The FTSE 100 ended up 35.46 points at 5,780.35, having earlier hit a fresh 21-month intra-day peak of 5,790.40. The index climbed 1.2 per cent on Thursday [...]
BOULTON, CAMPBELL IN BUST UP OF THE YEAR May 10, 2010 IF ANY readers were holed up behind a desk yesterday evening without access to a television, it’s time to indulge yourselves with a quick internet search, pronto. Yesterday’s Sky News coverage of Gordon Brown’s resignation as Prime Minister contained one of the best live TV snippets in years, as the channel’s political editor Adam Boulton [...]
BA’s image recovers from threat of strike action January 5, 2010 JOHN Lewis yesterday announced strong Christmas sales – and certainly from the BrandIndex satisfaction scores, it seems that Waitrose customers were satisfied with their Christmas shopping. Graph One shows the scores of six leading supermarkets for the month of December. A PR DISASTER British Airways, meanwhile, had a disastrous December on the PR front. Strikes [...]
ANALYST VIEWS: WHAT DO YOU MAKE OF BT’S MASSIVE PENSION DEFICIT? February 11, 2010 ROS ALTMANN | INDEPENDENT PENSIONS EXPERT BT has a huge pension scheme with a massive deficit. The company is doing quite well, so it’s important it pays as much as it can into the scheme now. If it doesn’t, we could see a situation similar to British Airways, which is in serious trouble with its [...]