World Briefing

Indonesia's Garuda to sell headquarters: Troubled airline Garuda Indonesia is to sell or lease out its headquarters in Jakarta in a move to get fresh funds, the official news agency Antara reported on Thursday. Garuda spokesman Pujobroto told Reuters on Thursday that he could not confirm the Antara report. He said any move would be the decision of company's president director. Antara quoted a Garuda source as saying the airline would quit its central Jakarta headquarters and build new, lower cost offices at the city's international airport near the airline's maintenance facility. The move would begin after the company completed the planned lay-off of thousands of workers later this year, the source said. Garuda has been hit hard by an 80 per cent fall in the value of the rupiah against the US dollar since July last year. Most of its operating costs are in dollars while revenues are in rupiah. The airline has announced a series of measures to cut costs in recent months including aircraft sales and routereductions as well as job cuts.

CS Group, Swisscom in telecom deal: Credit Suisse Group and Swisscom said they had signed a long-term agreement for Swisscom to provide the bulk of CS's data and voice communication services in Switzerland and voice communications to international points. "This form of collaboration is new for the Swiss telecom sector and will allow Swisscom, as a full-service provider, to integrate all telecommunications services," they said in a joint statement. State-owned Swisscom is on the verge of an initial public offering that will float 34.5 per cent of the group that could be worth up to 9.05 billion Swiss francs, making it Europe's biggest IPO this year.

MCI, Yahoo! dissolve marketing pact: Long distance giant MCI Communications Corp said it ended its marketing pact with Internet search engine Yahoo! Inc. MCI said the Yahoo partnership, first formed in January, was dissolved as MCI sold its Internet assets and closed its merger with WorldCom Inc. MCI and WorldComclosed their $40 billion merger on Monday, following final regulatory approval by the US Federal Communications Commission. To secure approval for the deal, MCI agreed to sell all ts Internet assets to Britain's Cable & Wireless Plc for $1.75 billion. In January, MCI and Yahoo joined forces to create a jointly branded online service to compete with America Online Inc, the nation's largest online service provider.

Top

Printer-friendly page