EuroWire January 2007

One stock analyst told Hughlett: “I don’t think Motorola will be locked out of India because they have the hottest phones in the world.” Motorola found itself involved in unpleasantness on another mobile phone front last year. In the spring, Russian authorities seized 167,000 Motorola phones destined for Evroset , Russia’s largest mobile phone retailer, and declared them contraband. After several months in the Russian legal system, the matter was resolved when Russian authorities gave back 117,519 of the seized phones – about $15 million worth. The other roughly 50,000 phones were to have been destroyed. Motorola did not ask to be compensated for the lost phones, an indication of its grasp of the importance of the so-called BRIC countries – Brazil, Russia, India, China – which are home to the world’s fastest-growing mobile phone markets. And the affair of the seized phones has not blunted Motorola’s thrust into Russia. On 4 th October, the company officially opened its newest flagship store, Red Square MOTO, in the famed GUM retail centre in Moscow. “Red Square MOTO is the first and most spectacular of a number of Motorola-branded stores planned for Russia,” said Inga Churashova, general manager of Motorola Russia. “We’re very excited about Motorola’s future in Russia.” ❈

for 200,000 people in the desert of Saudi Arabia. Bechtel’s boast is that it will go anywhere and build anything. ”[But] in Iraq,” said Los Angeles Times staff writer David Streitfeld: “Bechtel met its match.“ US government Bechtel, in early 2003, took on a number of brick-and-mortar Under assignment from the

projects in Iraq. In late 2006 it declared its work there finished, saying that it had completed 97 of 99 projects for $2.3 billion, a total that includes its undisclosed fee. The viability of the projects it leaves behind is a separate topic, but Streitfeld detailed the very considerable toll they took on Bechtel.

Iraq watch

No 1 engineering company Bechtel pulls up stakes in Iraq

The Bechtel Group of San Francisco is a force to be reckoned with. The sixth- largest privately owned company in the US is also the country’s largest engineering firm. Its mighty deeds include the subway system in its headquarters city; Hoover Dam (also known as Boulder Dam) on the Arizona-Nevada border; and a city

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EuroWire – January 2007