THE DAILY BRIEFING
PILOT DEAL The British helicopter-making arm of Airbus has won a £500m contract to provide aircraft, and train pilots for the Ministry of Defence.
The 17-year deal is with Ascent Flight Training, a joint venture between Britain’s Babcock and America’s Lockheed Martin, which manages helicopters for the MoD. Pilot training begins in 2018.
ASIAN PAIN Richemont profits fell by nearly a fifth due to weaker trading in Asia and property write-downs.
The owner of Cartier and Van Cleef & Arpels said sales had fallen 1pc, with strong performance in Europe, the Middle East, the US and Japan offset by falling demand in the Asia Pacific region.
The firm blamed asset write-downs of £74.8m this year, and said last year numbers had been lifted by the sale of property, bringing in a one-off £1.7bn. BRIGHT FUTURE Restructuring plans are paying off at publisher Future.
The company, which owns reviews website Tech-Crunch and Total Film magazine, made a loss of £300,000 in the six months to March 31, compared to £1.3 ma year earlier. Future’ s media division performed well with revenues up 15pc to £13.2m. The magazines arm saw revenues fall 12pc to £17m. Shares fell 1.6pc, by 0.14p, to 8.76p. TERROR BLOW Eurostar said the terrorist attack in Brussels had caused sales and passenger numbers to fall.
The firm said passenger numbers slipped 3 pc to 2.2 min the three months to the end of March compared to a year ago. Sales fell 6pc to £201m. But June’s Euro 2016 football finals have prompted a surge in ticket sales as fans head to France to support their national teams. SWIFT ACTION A payment system used by 11,000 banks is urging them to share information on cyber attacks.
Hackers used the Swift program as part of a £56m raid on Bangladesh’s Central Bank, and an attempted heist in Vietnam. The company has told banks to inform it when the Swift system is involved in an attack. STORE REBRAND The Co- operative group is set to rebrand thousands of stores. The mutual, which holds its annual general meeting in Manchester today, will revamp 2,900 supermarkets and funeral-care outlets.
It is thought the make-over will see the company switch to the shortened name Co-op.