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EuroWire – January 2009
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Tribune
reporter Julie Johnsson noted that Boeing has already
provided $9.5 billion in “backstop financing,” which enables
customers to go ahead with aircraft purchases until their loans
come through from banks or leasing companies. But company
officials said that, through its commercial finance arm, the
aerospace giant was also willing to become lender of last resort
for airlines that cannot obtain credit through conventional
channels. Boeing Capital Corp could tap $1.5 billion of unused
credit, the parent company said in a filing with the US Securities
and Exchange Commission. Analysts do not expect Boeing to
oblige every airline that asks for credit. “It will be for their best
customers,” Michael Derchin, airline and aerospace analyst for
FTN Midwest Securities (Cleveland), told Ms Johnsson. “It’s not
for everybody.”
In other news of Boeing, on 1
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st
November the company
and its satellite manufacturing unit were ordered to pay
more than $236 million in punitive damages to ICO Global
Communications as a result of a long-running legal dispute
over a proposed satellite communications network. The
award came on top of the more than $370 million in
compensatory damages Boeing was ordered to pay ICO the
previous week, in the same case. Boeing said it would seek
an appeal. The dispute centres on a $2 billion contract for
12 satellites placed in 1995 by ICO (Reston, Virginia) with
Hughes Electronics, which was acquired by Boeing in the
year 2000. According to arguments in the case, only one
satellite was successfully launched. Another exploded on
sendoff, and ten others are incomplete and in storage.
In brief . . .
Over the past year, California – the biggest market in the
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❈
US for solar power, with more than 33,000 installations –
has experienced an epidemic of burglaries of solar panels,
some of which wind up on Internet auction sites. In one
report, from San Jose, the headquarters of a solar installation
business was struck by thieves who took more than $30,000
worth of panels from the roof. Noting that the panels were
expertly disassembled, the owner termed the theft“the crime
of the future.” According to the energy and environment
blog Green Inc such thefts are definitely not for the amateur.
In “The Shocking Truth about Solar Panel Theft,” posted last
fall, Kate Galbraith noted that, although the panels can be
removed without difficulty with basic tools, “anyone cutting
the wrong wires runs the risk of a nasty jolt.” Solar panels
are high voltage, and their removal – even at night, during
downtime – entails physical as well as legal risk.
Automotive
The automobile industry of the US is in
desperate trouble, largely of its own making.
What is to be done?
“Are the Big Three worth saving?”
The question was put by
Los Angeles Times
staff writer Ken
Bensinger in late October of 2008. The downward spiral of the
US auto industry was accelerating. To save itself, General Motors
was seeking a merger with Chrysler.