Airbus had planned to reveal its orders directly after Boeing but had to delay a news conference when the floor of

Airbus had planned to reveal its orders directly after Boeing, but had to delay a news conference when the floor of the Farnborough press centre collapsed.Meanwhile, the row between the two manufacturers continued over whether Airbus’s plan for a massive ‘’super-jumbo”, the A3XX, could be viable. But confusion surrounded news of an option by Condor, the German charter airline, to buy 12 A320s. Condor denied it had made a commitment, though Airbus claimed it had signed a memorandum of understanding, the precursor to a firm deal, and described current talks as ‘’serious”.The news followed Monday’s announcement by Boeing of orders worth more than $6bn. Earlier this year Airbus secured a $1.5bn (pounds 1bn) order to supply 30 A320 aircraft to China.On top of the Asian orders, Airbus said Federal Express, the US cargo delivery giant, was buying 11 A300/600s to add to its 25 strong fleet already in service with the company. On the second day of the Farnborough Airshow, the European plane-making consortium revealed its first order with the fast-growing South Korean carrier, Asiana Airlines, for 18 of the A321 medium-haul planes to operate on domestic routes. The consortium refused to put a value on the order, which will run until 2005, though it is thought to be worth up to $1bn (pounds 650m).
The news confirms Airbus’s increasing success in attracting customers from the Far East,forecast to see a massive air travel increase into the next century.Another deal announced yesterday was to supply Hong-Kong-based Cathay Pacific Airways with a further three long-haul A340-300s.

The deal follows its controversial pounds 825m acquisition of the train leasing company Porterbrook last month from a management buyout team.Swebus, owned by the Swedish national railway, made pre-tax profits of Swedish kroner 111m (pounds 9.8m) last year on turnover of SKr3.2bn and controls 30 per cent of Sweden’s bus market, but only 3 to 4 per cent of the Nordic markets outside Sweden.. Airbus yesterday revealed a batch of orders for up to 38 planes estimated to be worth around $3bn (pounds 1.9bn), providing further evidence of the recovery in the market for civil aircraft as carriers replace outdated fleets. Stagecoach, the acquisitive and aggressive bus and rail operator, yesterday served notice that it planned to expand further into Europe as it sealed the pounds 230m takeover of the state-owned Swedish bus group Swebus. Chairman Brian Souter said that the acquisition of Swebus, the biggest bus operator in the Nordic region with a fleet of 3,450 buses and 6,200 staff, would provide a strong platform for further expansion in the area and other parts of Europe.
The group, which controls 18 per cent of the British bus market and operates the South West Trains franchise into London’s Waterloo station, aims to increase turnover four-fold to pounds 2bn by the end of the decade.Stagecoach is paying pounds 115.6m in cash for Swebus and taking on debt and accrued interest of pounds 117m. It seems that Basil Fawlty’s “Don’t mention the War” may well be its slogan.Back in Threadneedle Street, the museum has recreated Sir John Soane’s elegant Bank Stock Office, where Victorian investors would come to count their coupons.The museum is still free, so City workers can pop in and try their hand at the fully working foreign exchange desk, without the losses and stress of the real thing.Chris Ingram, chairman and chief executive of advertising company CIA Group, is taking his entire 200-odd workforce on an adventure jaunt at Pickwell Park near Heywards Heath, West Sussex.Mr Ingram and his finance director Peter Toynton will lead the gang on a helicopter treasure hunt, as well as a highly violent version of It’s a Knockout. The latter includes rocket firing, mortar combat and a pump- action shotgun duel.Whether any of the ad people will survive to service their clients, such as Lloyds TSB, Calvin Klein and Unilever, remains to be seen.However feebly our athletes did at the Atlanta Olympics, console yourself with the thought that one Birmingham company won four gold medals, three silver and four bronze.IMI’s chief executive Gary Allen is rightly pleased as punch that the group’s Brummie subsidiary, Eley, made the ammunition for four of the gold medallists in the small bore shooting competition.Shooters from Russia, China, Yugoslavia and France found the bullseye with Eley ammo.Mr Allen, who has been at IMI for around 30 years, also points out that all of Eley’s bullets are used in peacetime target shooting, with none going to the military So Eley wins the Green as well.. “They’re actually made from dentist’s paste,” he says, deflatingly.

“The owners of the gold we keep (the Government) wouldn’t allow us to show the real stuff.”There are two real bars, bought for the museum, but you’ll have to guess which.Mr Keyworth and his colleagues have been advising the German Bundesbank on its own planned museum, although the 1939-45 years have proved a touchy subject. “It is a considerable accolade to be awarded such a post and to be able to pass one’s knowledge on to the younger generation in this field….”Malcolm Shearson, an insolvency practitioner with Grant Thornton who was involved in the Carden receivership, said: “It does prove that there are opportunities after insolvency.”To the Bank of England’s Museum, tucked away in the Bartholomew Lane entrance, where curator John Keyworth lets slip some of the facts not found in the guide books.According to Mr Keyworth, the most popular exhibit is the pile of gold bars in the middle of the Rotunda. Developer Steve Morgan then bought Carden from the receivers. According to receivers, creditors suffered losses of “many millions of pounds”.There were more losses when Mr Broome entered an individual voluntary arrangement with his creditors to pay off his personal debts later in 1994.Mr Broome said yesterday that he was “delighted” by the professorship. Then in 1987 he bought Battersea Power Station in London and things turned sour.

His ambitious project to turn the site into a leisure attraction, a scheme personally launched by Margaret Thatcher, went into liquidation in April 1994 with a deficiency of pounds 75.8m.Still enthused by big projects, he launched a pounds 22m redevelopment of Carden Park in Cheshire Bank of Scotland sent in the receivers in October 1994. John Broome is to head up the team of principal and senior lecturers who will teach the country’s first degree course in themed leisure management design.
Mr Broome first sprang to fame with Alton Towers, which he developed as a leisure park in the 1970s and then sold to Pearson in 1990 for pounds 60m. An entrepreneur who headed two businesses that went bust, and who went into personal insolvency two years ago, has been made visiting professor at Sunderland University’s Business School. Even adding back a pounds 500,000 loss on copper stocks, profits in the original operations were down pounds 800,000.But IMI says recovery is in sight for the UK housing and German repair and maintenance markets. With gearing cut to 9 per cent, the group is looking at acquisition prospects in Europe and the US for its fluid power pneumatic components arm.Full-year profits of pounds 139m would put the shares, down 16p at 380p, on prospective p/e ratio of 15 Fairly rated.. The business was hit by the harsh winter and difficult markets on the Continent.