Rolls-Royce and Daimler, through their 50:50 joint venture, have agreed to take over the German engine manufacturer Tognum in a deal worth €3.4 billion.

The two companies first bid for Tognum in early March, offering €24 per share; however it wasn’t until they raised their offer to €26 per share that they secured the backing of Tognum’s board.

Friedrichshafen, Germany-based Tognum is the world’s second-biggest manufacturer of high-speed diesel engines for the defence, marine and energy sectors.

Bombardier Inc. has been awarded the contract to design, build, operate and maintain a monorail system for King Abdulaziz International Airport (KAIA) in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia.

The contract, for a Bombardier INNOVIA APM 300 system, is worth $96 million.

Saudi Binladin Group is the contractor responsible for the design and construction of the KAIA Development Project, which will see existing passenger facilities expanded and an additional passenger terminal building constructed to cater to rising passenger numbers.

South Africa’s largest private hospital operator Netcare has announced a rise in first-half profits of 15 per cent, driven by a strong performance in South Africa.

Profits for the six months ending 31 March rose to R666 million, up from R579 million in the same period a year earlier.

The company said that growth in the South African market was able to offset far weaker results in the UK, where the challenging economic environment had a negative impact.

The chief executives of AT&T and T-Mobile USA appeared before a Senate antitrust subcommittee this week to defend their proposed $39 billion merger.

AT&T (the second largest wireless provider in the United States) announced in March its intention to acquire T-Mobile USA (the fourth largest) from Deutsche Telekom to overtake the current market leader Verizon Wireless.

British Airways and the Unite union have finally reached an agreement that will see an end to their long-running dispute.

The dispute, which lasted almost two years and involved 22 days of strike action, originally began because of cabin crew job cuts and a pay freeze.

BA has now agreed to restore travel concessions to staff who went on strike and award a two-year pay deal for cabin crew, worth up to 7.5 per cent. The agreement will be put to a ballot of around 10,000 union members, with Unite strongly recommending them to accept.

Google announced at its Google I/O conference yesterday that its new computer, Chromebook, will go on sale in June in the United States and six European countries.

The first models will be made by manufacturers Samsung and Acer and will be available online from Amazon and Best Buy from June 15 in the US. Chromebooks will be available from leading retailers in the UK, France, Germany, Netherlands, Italy and Spain, with more countries to follow.

Danish wind turbine manufacturer Vestas has signed an agreement for 70 hectares of land at the Port of Sheerness in Kent, UK, on which it hopes to build a facility to manufacture its new purpose-built offshore wind turbine.

Vestas has secured exclusive rights to the land, with the option lasting for approximately one year with the possibility to extend for another 12 months.

For most large businesses, rolling out a major initiative company-wide is always high-cost. Many companies plough ahead based on gut feel or a degree of manual financial analysis. So much more, however, can be gained through the rigorous business testing which is now possible using advanced technology, as Phil Marsland, European head of Applied Predictive Technologies, explains.

Most business leaders would confess to comparing themselves with the competition; but taking this one step further and carrying out regular benchmarking activities can lead to a number of benefits and improvements to performance, as Ray Wilkinson, director of the Best Practice Club, explains.

Electricity supply is a crucial ingredient of any supply chain, but in South Africa, urgent action is required to restructure the electricity distribution industry (EDI), as Dr. Willie de Beer explains exclusively to Martin Ashcroft.