EoW May 2009

EuroWire – May 2009

could include its attraction for low-cost capital, with risk spread

across countries and commodities. The behemoth would also be

large enough to compete with Australian-British giants Rio Tinto

and BHP Billiton, according to Mr Read “a long-held dream of

Russian tycoons.”

The merger proposed by two such people – Norilsk Nickel

shareholders Vladimir Potanin and Oleg Deripaska – would

combine that company with Evraz; the mining and metals firm

Metalloinvest; steel and coal producer Mechel; and potash

producer Uralkali.

The deal could also include Russia’s VSMPO-Avisma, whose

titanium customers include the Gresham (Oregon) plant

of Boeing Co, the Chicago-based plane maker. In return for

liquidating debts the Kremlin, through its arms agency Russian

Technologies, would receive a 25% stake plus one share of stock

in the merged colossus.

For their part, US customers of Evraz Oregon Steel told the

❈

Oregonian

that Russian government involvement couldmean

a helping hand at the right time. Lower steel prices since last

summer had imposed curtailments at the company’s spiral

pipe mill and at Canadian plants bought in a $4 billion deal

last year. But improvement in domestic credit markets would

favour a rebound in steel prices as early as this summer, with

all that that promises for the 80-year-old Oregon business

and its clientele. Alan Humbard, purchasing manager at

Fought & Co, a fabricator that buys slabs from Evraz Oregon

Steel, said, “It might help keep them from closing up some

things here.”

Space

The US, once dominant in the

commercial space industry,

has relinquished the lead to France

Writing in the

International Herald Tribune

on the “sliver of France”

that is French Guiana, Simon Romero cited its prominence in

commercial satellite launching as a sign of a much-diminished

US presence in that corner of the evolving world economy.

Located on the northern coast of South America, French Guiana

is an integral part of the French Republic and notable for

the Guiana Space Centre. This spaceport, in the commune of

Kourou, is a joint enterprise of the government of France and the

Paris-based European Space Agency (ESA).

“The driving force behind Kourou’s development is Arianespace,

a French company that began as a poor cousin to NASA [the

US National Aeronautics and Space Administration] nearly

three decades ago,” wrote Mr Romero. “Today, it has edged

past Boeing and Lockheed Martin to become the leading

player in the$3.2 billion commercial-satellite-launching industry,”

accounting for about half of all the tonnage sent into orbit

for business purposes each year. (“In the Jungle, a Com-

mercial Space Coup for France”). To be sure, commercial space is

a small field when compared with the military and government

satellite business still dominated by the US and Russia.

But Mr Romero pointed out that it encompasses the launching