The week that was: 19 August 08 - 26 August 08
It’s official – Virgin Atlantic is flying high. While Procurement Leaders has spent much of the past eight months reporting nothing but doom and gloom in the aviation industry, Richard Branson’s company has just announced pre-tax profits of £34.8m for its 2007/08 financial year, a massive hike on the £6m recorded in the previous 12 months. Perhaps surprisingly, at a time when most companies are slashing their T&E budgets, Virgin Atlantic put the rise down to increased numbers of business travellers. Whether Branson and his cohorts will be cracking open the Bollinger this time next year remains to be seen (high fuel prices should ensure a rather more modest gain) but for now at least, the sound of corks popping will be audible from London to New York.
Quote of the week - "The IOC in 2001 reached the conclusions that the focus must be much more on sustainability, that big is not necessarily better," London 2012 chief, Sebastian Coe, tells reporters that size isn’t everything after the epic Olympics closing ceremony in Beijing.
High fuel prices mean rocketing profits for oil producers – right? Well, try telling that to Chinese oil-giant Sinopec, which is finding out that the exact opposite is true. Asia’s top oil refiner reported a massive 77 per cent fall in first half profits this weekend after state-set fuel prices - meaning the firm was unable to pass on any costs to its customers - left the company high and dry. "It is expected that in the second half of this year the international prices of crude oil will remain high, the domestic refining business will still be under pressure and the demand growth for chemical products may slow down," the company said in a statement. Despite its somewhat gloomy tone, however, Procurement Leaders advises them to keep their pecker up, after all things could be worse, China could have finished below the US in the Olympic medals table.
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