QUOTE OF THE DAY
“We want more than 50 percent of this market, and we will have more than 50 percent of this market.”
Fabrice Bregie, Airbus’ chief executive, on the demand for an estimated 6,000 wide-body planes Article,1D
Visa sues Wal-Mart over swipe-fee suit
Visa Inc. has sued Wal-Mart Stores Inc. in a bid to stop the world’s largest retailer from filing a lawsuit to press price-fixing claims over merchant swipe fees.
Wal-Mart is among more than 7,000 retailers that dropped out of a multi-billion dollar settlement with Visa and MasterCard Inc. over the fees, which are charged to merchants when consumers pay with credit cards. In a complaint made public Thursday in Brooklyn, N.Y., federal court, Visa said it wants to prevent “the continuation of endless, wasteful litigation between the parties.”
“Put simply, Visa seeks finality in its dispute with Wal-Mart,” the Foster City, Calif.-based credit-card firm said in the complaint.
Visa, MasterCard and many of the country’s largest banks are seeking a Brooklyn federal judge’s final approval for a $7.25 billion settlement that would end an eight-year legal battle on behalf of millions of retailers over allegations that the card companies illegally fixed the fees. Retail trade associations and dozens of large retailers have objected to the settlement, claiming its terms are unfair, and thousands have dropped out.
“We are disappointed that VISA chose to file this unwarranted and unsupportable lawsuit in retaliation for our decision to opt out and object to an unfair settlement agreement,” Wal-Mart spokesman Randy Hargrove said in a statement. “The proposed settlement would allow credit card companies and big banks to perpetuate a broken system that costs consumers billions of dollars each year, and we, like more than 7,000 other conscientious merchants who have opted out, cannot go along with it.”
N.D. shale site hits record oil output
Producers in North Dakota’s Bakken shale formation increased oil output to a record 727,149 barrels a day in April, according to preliminary data compiled by the state Industrial Commission.
Continental Resources Inc. and Whiting Petroleum Corp. are among companies that increased production in the largest U.S. shale formation by 1.2 percent from March. Output was up 33 percent from April 2012.
Increased output from shale formations including the Bakken and the Eagle Ford in southern Texas helped U.S.
oil production reach 7.37 million barrels a day in the week ending May 3, the most since February 1992, Energy Information Administration data show. The figure slipped by 76,000 barrels a day to 7.22 million last week.
About 75 percent of Bakken oil left North Dakota on rail cars in April, up from 71 percent in March, the state Pipeline Authority said. About 17 percent was shipped out via pipeline, down from 20 percent in March.
North Dakota produced 793,249 barrels a day, up 1.3 percent from March.
- Bloomberg News
Heathrow starts 12-month terminal trial
London’s Heathrow airport is sending 4,000 bags a day through the luggage system of a $3.9 billion terminal not scheduled to take flights for a year as it seeks to avoid the havoc of its last new opening in 2008.
Heathrow will conduct 180 different trials and deploy 14,000 volunteers to play the role of passengers as it prepares for the opening of the Terminal 2 site on June 4, 2014, Development Director John Holland-Kaye said Friday in an interview.
The project aims to stop travelers switching to less crowded hubs by creating one terminal on the site of buildings dating from the 1950s, allowing it to bring carriers from Deutsche Lufthansa AG’s Star Alliance under a single roof. Heathrow is tapping the expertise of Dublin, Singapore and Beijing airports to ensure a smooth transition and planning a phased introduction starting with United Continental Holdings Inc., Air Canada, ANA Holdings Inc. and Air China Ltd.
“Opening any new terminal … is enormously complex,” Holland-Kaye said. “All you can say is that we’re less likely to make some of the mistakes made here and elsewhere in the past, but there’s plenty of scope for things to go wrong.”
Heathrow’s last major opening, of the British Airways dedicated Terminal 5 in March 2008, was marred by a baggage-system breakdown that caused more than 600 flight delays and millions of dollars in lost revenue.
- Bloomberg News
Siemens AG wins $2.5 billion rail order
Siemens AG, Europe’s largest engineering company, sealed a $2.5 billion contract to provide carriages for a London rail link, beating Bombardier Inc., which is cutting jobs at its plant in England.
The order to provide 1,140 new carriages for use on the Thames link line will be awarded to a consortium led by Munich-based Siemens, the U.K.’s Department for Transport said.
The Siemens team was nominated as preferred bidder by the British government in June 2011 after its financing unit helped structure the payment of the deal, whereby the U.K. won’t pay anything upfront. Montreal-based Bombardier said after the announcement it would cut more than 1,400 jobs at its rail-car plant in Derby, England. Most of Siemens’s rail manufacturing is in Germany.
Unlike Bombardier, Siemens has its own financing division, which is able to lend money to customers to invest in its projects and facilitate investment by third parties.
The consortium awarded the contract is called Cross London Trains and comprises infrastructure investment groups Innisfree Ltd. and 3i Infrastructure Plc, and Siemens Project Ventures GmbH, a unit of Siemens Financial Services.
- Bloomberg News
Foreign demand lowers for U.S. debt
WASHINGTON - Foreign demand for U.S. Treasury securities fell in April for the first time in more than a year, as China and Japan both trimmed their holdings.
The Treasury Department said total foreign holdings dropped 1.2 percent in April from March to $5.67 trillion.
China, the largest foreign buyer of Treasury debt, reduced its holdings 0.4 percent to $1.26 trillion. Japan, the second-largest buyer, cut its holdings 1.2 percent to $1.1 trillion.
Even with the reductions, Treasury debt held by foreigners is up 8.6 percent from a year ago. The gain shows overseas investors are still buying U.S. debt, despite debate in Congress over reducing federal deficits.
Business, Pages 28 on 06/15/2013