Iryo runs at a loss High speed train operator Iryo lost €79 million in 2023 after an investment totalling €900 million.
Competing against Spain’s state-owned Renfe and French company Ouigo, 2023 was the first year that Iryo had simultaneously operated its three principal routes linking Madrid with Catualuña, Levante and Andulucia.
Iryo is the brand name of the private high speed railway company, Intermodalidad de Levante, which is jointly owned by Italy’s publicly-owned Trenitalia, regional airline Air Nostrum and the Spanish infrastructure investment fund Globalvia.
End of an era Harland & Wolff, eternally associated with the Belfast shipyard that built the Titanic, is entering administration for the second time in five years.
The company had been unsuccessful in trying to fund new funding and announced on September 16 that it was insolvent. It planned to appoint administrators “imminently” although the administration process would be limited to Harland & Wolff Group Holdings and the operational companies running the yards were expected to continue trading.
All shareholders would probably lose their money, Harland & Wolff said, although sources revealed that around 20 companies were interested in acquiring parts of the business in a sales procedure carried out by investment bank Rothschild.
Iberdrola waiver The Maine Public Utilities Commission (PUC) has approved the takeover of Central Maine Power’s parent company Avangrid by Iberdrola, its largest shareholder.
The PUC agreed on September 17 that Central Maine Power could omit the required state review of the $2.5 billion (€2.25 billion) transaction that would put Avangrid under the full control of the Bilbao-based energy giant.
In a 2-1 vote, the state regulators finally agreed to waive the assessment that allowed the Spanish multinational to acquire the remaining 18.4 per cent of Avangrid which it did not already own.
Earlier, Fitch Ratings had said that the deal would be positive for Avangrid, which could now benefit from the “financial flexibility” of Iberdrola.
No change Britain’s annual inflation rate held steady at 2.2 per cent in August, with no change on the July figure.
This was slightly above the Bank of England’s 2 per cent target but matched the predictions of a Reuters’ poll of economists and was lower than the Bank’s 2.4 per cent forecast.
Petrol prices had fallen, the Office for National Statistics(ONS) figures showed, but airfares rose, especially those to European destinations.
Ready to switch Forty per cent of phone users in Spain would be prepared to move from traditional operators like Movistar, MasOrange or Vodafone to a low-cost company.
After questioning users in Spain, the UK, France, Italy and Germany, a survey by management consulting company Oliver Wyman found that the Italians were most inclined to move to a cheaper company, with 45 per cent happy to switch.
They were followed by the Spanish, where 72 per cent are clients of traditional companies but 40 per cent would change to the low-cost companies which offer services practically identical to those of the big operators.
Observer sale The Guardian Media Group (GMG) is said to be talks to sell The Observer.
News website Tortoise Media reportedly approached the GMG, which acquired the newspaper in 1993, with a takeover offer.
No financial details were revealed although The Observer, with a 105,000 print circulation was unlikely to fetch a high price, insiders said.
Meanwhile, GMG announced that total revenue fell 2.5 per cent to £257.8 million (€306.3 million) during its last financial year, owing to an advertising slowdown and “sustained structural pressures on print.”
Marching orders Amazon staff will be back in the office five days a week once its hybrid work policy comes to an end in January 2025.
“We’re going to return to the office and the way we were before the onset of Covid,” chief executive Andy Jassy said, explaining that it would help staff “to invent, collaborate, and be sufficiently connected to each other.”
In Spain, where Amazon has a total of 25,000 permanent employees, this will affect approximately 5,000 people who work in the company’s offices.