By
LAURA SLATTERY
THE QUESTION: Is the airline still doomed or poised for another take-off?
After a squib so damp at last year’s Paris air show that the grass is still wet 12 months later, the biennial Farnborough Airshow was back for another week of “my plane orders are bigger than your plane orders” on the part of the global airlines who can still fly from A to B without going bust mid-air. Those who have managed to get up off their recession-scarred knees and consider a future in which the number of air passengers surges once more include Emirates and Qatar Airways, plus some aircraft leasing groups such as RBS Aviation Capital, which ordered 95 aircraft, and our own Avolon, which has agreed to 12.
With orders at the show exceeding $28 billion after three days, it seems the doom in the industry is certainly not getting doomier, to paraphrase Bertie Ahern, although spoilsport analysts claim the renewed optimism has been offset by a substantially lower military spend. But with the International Air Transport Association forecasting that the global industry will make a modest profit in 2010, and considering flights within Asia are now the key growth sector, it’s hard to imagine Airbus and Boeing losing too much dream-time over their refusal last year to give Ryanair everything it wanted.
NAMA-watch:The first legal challenge (an ominous start to any sentence) to Nama will be heard at the Commercial Court on October 5th, it was confirmed yesterday. On this fast-tracked date, developer Paddy McKillen will object to the transfer of €80 million in "fully performing" loans to the State agency on grounds it will have a "detrimental" impact on his rights and reputation. But the attempt to pick and choose which assets are Nama-bound on the part of bank customers is a "real threat" to Nama, according to the State, which has always maintained that a portion of non-toxic assets would come along for the ride (and make the agency's drive towards break-even status seem more realistic). But is it Nama that will damage the reputation of developers, or is it McKillen's fellow developers – the bad boys in the class – who will undermine the reputation of Nama?
"Unusually uncertain"How Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke describes the outlook for the US economy. (It's code for "sorry, I haven't a clue".)
Green shoot:To placate Brian Cowen, who this week took the opportunity of a Moody's downgrade of Irish sovereign debt to declare that he's fed up with "pervasive negativity" in the media, we will return to our occasional series of "green shoots", which has been admittedly more occasional than we had originally planned. For if the economy has turned a corner, it appears to have rounded on to a rather desolate concrete carpark: the only tufts of green appear if you stare really hard for a really long time. So while it could just be another apparition, we will nominate eBay, which this week announced a second-quarter profit that beat analysts' expectations, with chief executive John Donohue saying he was "confident" that the e-commerce turnaround is on track. All of which is definitely not bad news for the circa 1,750 people employed by eBay in Ireland.
STATUS UPDATE:– Average debt per hotel room in Ireland, according to consultants Horwath Bastow Charleton
Black arts:Disgraced media tycoon Conrad Black has been released from prison, prompting Andrew Neil, one-time attendee of Black's lavish parties, to warn he would be "out for revenge".
Contract wrangling:Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg says he is "quite sure" he did not sign a document handing over 84 per cent of the site to software coder Paul Ceglia in 2003.
Power brands:Reckitt Benckiser, the group behind Cillit Bang, Lemsip and Nurofen, has added SSL, recession-proof owner of Durex condoms, to its portfolio of household essentials.
