A round-up of other business news in brief
Cormican is new CEO of Bioptics
HUGH CORMICAN, a founding director of Northern Ireland specialist cameras group Andor Technology, has been made chief executive of US imaging technology firm Bioptics. The Arizona-based firm, which was founded in 2001 and has several Irish investors, designs, manufactures and markets X-Ray sensor technology.
Mr Cormican, a non-executive director at Bioptics since November, is looking forward to continuing "to position the company as the pre-eminent pioneer in mammography and using our expertise in the wider field of cancer detection and treatment," he said.
Merrill Lynch 'misled investors' - regulator
MERRILL LYNCH was yesterday accused by a Massachusetts regulator of fraudulently selling auction-rate securities (ARS) and misleading investors about the stability of the market, which collapsed this year.
In an 80-page complaint, William Galvin, Massachusetts' secretary of state, claimed that the investment bank co-opted its "supposedly independent" research department to help in sales efforts.
The legal challenge is the latest regulatory action to emerge from the multiple investigations into the failure of the $330 billion ARS market. - (Financial Times service)
Aer Lingus takes just 10% of Belfast route
Aer Lingus has secured less than 10 per cent of the Belfast-London air route market in its first five months of operating its Belfast-London Heathrow link.
Figures provided by the UK Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) show that between January and May, passenger numbers on the airline's Belfast to Heathrow route are more than one-third down on the number of passengers that the airline carried between Shannon and Heathrow for the corresponding period last year.
The new CAA figures show that 87,297 Aer Lingus passengers used the Belfast International airport to Heathrow service from January to the end of May this year, compared with the 131,888 passengers who used the Shannon to Heathrow service in the corresponding period of 2007, a decrease of 33.8 per cent.
A spokesman for Aer Lingus said that the Belfast to Heathrow target for this year was to reach 500,000 passenger carried and that the airline has already secured 500,000 bookings at its Belfast base.
Big oil firms post higher profits
ROYAL DUTCH Shell, Eni and Repsol, three of Europe's largest oil companies, reported higher profits yesterday thanks to soaring oil prices, while oil and gas production growth remained sluggish.
Shell, the second-largest non-government controlled oil company by market value, reported a 5 per cent rise in second-quarter current cost of supply net income to $7.9bn. It said that excluding one-offs it beat analysts' forecasts.
Italy's Eni posted a 4.4 per cent rise in second-quarter adjusted net profit, below analysts' forecasts, as higher taxes weighed on the result. Spain's Repsol YPF said its first-half adjusted net profit rose 15 per cent to €1.883bn, ahead of forecasts. - (Reuters)
