Business

Alstom will adapt to current situation
by Magdalena Rosova

As the financial crises spread to broader economy, this week has been dominated by the string of losses. No sector seems to be spared the falling sales and mass layoffs. French engineering group Alstom is one of them. Alstom's profit jumped 63 percents to 527 million euros. Patrick Kron, chairman and CEO of Alstom, said that it is thanks to combination of very high commercial activity combined with an improvement of performance. Yet Alstom's shares has lost half of its values since the beginning of the year. Kron thinks it was the question of future demand. The company needs to think of whether its customers will be able to buy the products. Alston has number of answers! for this questions. Kron said Alston had record backlog and strong cash and hands which gives the company an ability to adapt. Furthermore, Alston's markets, infrastructure general, power generation and rail transportation are long term green markets. They were green markets before the crisis and they remained so. Therefore Kron suppose Alston was in good business and would adapt with the growth of the demand. However, project to build the first high speed train in Latin America in Argentina has been delayed because of financial crises. But Kron said it was very specific project because it should by financed by international loan. So the project is not in their backlog as the project was subject of financing. Obviously, the situation was not very favorable to raise the finances. When the project is financed it will be launched and Kron hopes it would happen soon. Kron said that there are still project and the demand continues. For example, city of New York has ordered ! 382 subway from Alston and the company will be also interested! to buil d high speed railway in California. Kron believes that infrastructure and modernizing are needed. And he finds it right that the governments wanted to stimulate economy through infrastructure. In future, he sees a big challenge in building an railway infrastructure in Europe, which would connect European capitals.

related story (sgx16366): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EemB5ehwdFk...

by Magdalena Rosova for SigEx Ventures (http://sigexventures.com)

SigEx Ventures's matrix of properties are quickly becoming leaders in digital telebroadcasting, free content delivery allowing people to easily talk, view, upload and share through free online TV broadcasting, free ! unlimited global calls, video blogs and SMS. SigEx Ventures invests in projects deploying "free" to add-on royalty revenue models

posted by Blog TechSource @ 8:32 AM