Bank of Scotland, part of the HBOS group, was yesterday hit with a £1.25m fine by the Financial Services Authority for failing to be vigilant about the risk of money laundering.
Bank of Scotland was unable to hand over crucial information about the identity of customers in 55 per cent of cases when questioned by the FSA.Banks demand new customers provide passport and utility-bill details when they open accounts to prove they are who they say they are. So far, Airbus has orders for 129 A380s.Total Airbus turnover reached €19.3bn last year while the value of new orders was €32.8bn, giving Airbus a 54 per cent market share.Taking aircraft cancellations into account, market share was 254 aircraft, or 52 per cent.Mr Forgeard said that the big volumes and higher profit margins on the A380, which sells for $260m, would help offset the weak dollar.Efficiency moves, such as a reduction in final assembly time for a narrow-bodied A320 from 40 days to 25 days, would also help, he said.. Mr Forgeard said achieving that target would be more difficult as the euro nudges towards $1.30.Airbus has warned in the past that if deliveries were to dip to around 250-260 aircraft and the euro to strengthen further, then the company might be forced to raise more money from its shareholders to fund the $11bn development of its A380 superjumbo.Spending on the 555-seater jet, which is scheduled to fly for the first time next year and should enter service in 2006, is due to peak this year at just over €1bn. Airbus also beat Boeing on orders received – 284 against 240 for its US rival.However, Mr Forgeard said the market this year would be “soft” with deliveries only expected to be “close to 300″ compared with Boeing’s forecast of 275 to 290 jets.Meanwhile, John Leahy, the commercial director at Airbus, forecast around 250 new orders this year – a decline of 12 per cent on 2003.Mr Leahy said the recovery in the market had not been as strong as Airbus expected it to be three months ago, with demand in Europe not picking up as well as had been assumed.Airbus is aiming to achieve a 10 per cent profit margin by 2006 with the aid of the cost reduction programme, based on an exchange rate of $1.20 to the euro.

Airbus Industrie, the European aircraft manufacturer, warned yesterday of a downturn in orders and production this year, and said the weakness of the dollar would pose a challenge to the company’s profit targets.
No?Forgeard, the chief executive of Airbus, forecast that 2004 would be “a very, very tough year” which meant it was even more important to achieve the group’s €1.5bn cost-cutting plan.He was speaking as Airbus confirmed that it overtook its arch-rival Boeing last year as the world’s biggest commercial aircraft manufacturer for the first time in its 30-year history.Airbus, which is owned 80 per cent by EADS and 20 per cent by BAE Systems, delivered 305 aircraft in 2003 compared with Boeing’s 281. “Whatever happens will be a board decision and that decision has not been taken and will not be discussed until the February board meeting,” he said.. but the two departures are entirely unrelated,” Mr Wilson said, adding he had been contemplating retiring for a while.He would not comment on speculation that the company’s dividend might be cut. The finance director and company secretary, David Thomas, has resigned to become finance director of the computer games retailer Game Group.Mr Wilson leaves on 1 March while Mr Thomas has agreed to stay on until 1 July, if required. The company’s chief operating officer, Tony Potter, and Wong Hong Ren, an executive director, will become joint interim chief executives while the company looks for replacements.Shares the group closed down 2.5 per cent at 306.75p after the statement, but the company insisted its financial performance would be in line with previous guidance “It’s unfortunate timing …

Millennium & Copthorne Hotels suffered a double blow yesterday as it announced that its chief executive and finance director would be leaving the business. Chris Corrigan, head of a shipping company that will be competing with the line, said: “They’ve built a railway for five trains a week and a few cartons of beer, and I’ve described the financial returns on that as being smaller than a tick’s testicles.”Bruce McGowan, chief executive of Freightlink, the company operating the freight service, said he was confident it would be viable within three years. The line is expected to carry 800,000 tons of goods a year by 2010.. In the desert, toiling in one of the world’s driest regions, they had to sink boreholes for water.Now their work has reached fruition, and sceptics are already calling the railway a white elephant. For two years, construction gangs battled some of the harshest terrain on earth, laying track at a rate of 4.2km a day, building 90 bridges and making 1,500 culverts.Workers faced daytime temperatures of up to 50C; in summer, track-laying began at 2am because the machinery became impossibly hot when the sun rose. In the wet season, the northern crew downed tools for three months to prevent their labours being washed away by torrential downpours.

The line reached Alice Springs in 1929, but there it stopped, halted by the Great Depression, a world war and the pusillanimity of successive prime ministers who promised to extend it to Darwin. So repeatedly were Territorians’ hopes raised and dashed that it came to be known as the “never-never line”.The Alice to Darwin extension is Australia’s biggest infrastructure project, costing A$1.4bn (£595m). “It’s finally become a reality.”The chief minister of the Northern Territory, Clare Martin, said the line would end the north’s isolation. “It’s a moment the Territory has been waiting for for a long time,” she said.The dream began in the steam age, with the railway first promised by the prime minister Alfred Deakin in 1907. “It’s the north-south link that we’ve always wanted,” Mr Rann said. Hundreds more lined the track to watch the 1.2km-long train pull out a few minutes late, after a ceremony attended by politicians and dignitaries.The train, powered by two locomotives painted with Aboriginal artwork, will stop in the dusty Outback settlements of Alice Springs, Katherine and Tennant Creek (a 20-minute stop at 1am) before arriving in Darwin on Saturday.The South Australian premier, Mike Rann, described construction of the line as “an act of nation-building” that would finally link Darwin – a city closer to Singapore and Jakarta than Sydney and Melbourne – with the rest of Australia.