Saturday, August 01, 2020

James Murdoch quits News Corp board over editorial content 'disagreement'

Rupert Murdoch's son James has resigned from the board of news publisher News Corp. citing disagreements over editorial content. The 47-year-old has recently been critical of his father's business and its media coverage.

James Murdoch, son of media tycoon Rupert Murdoch, has resigned from the board of news publisher News Corp citing disagreements over the editorial content of its newspapers, which includes the Wall Street Journal, and the New York Post among others.

"My resignation is due to disagreements over certain editorial content published by the company’s news outlets and certain other strategic decisions," Murdoch said in a letter sent to the board on Friday.

James' more conservative brother Lachlan Murdoch is the heir apparent to Rupert Murdoch and is co-chairman of News Corp, which the family controls through 39% of the voting shares. Lachlan is also the executive chairman and CEO of Fox Corporation which owns the right-wing US network Fox News.

"We are grateful to James for his many years of service to the company. We wish him the very best in his future endeavors," Rupert and Lachlan Murdoch said in a statement.

James Murdoch, the former CEO of 21st Century Fox, was once seen as the successor to his father's media empire. He has recently been critical of the family business and its media coverage.

Rupert Murdoch grew his media empire from a newspaper group in Australia.

The New York-based company publishes major newspapers in the UK and Australia and owns book publisher HarperCollins.
In January, James and his wife said they were disappointed by the climate change skepticism of some News Corp-owned publications in their coverage of Australia's wildfires. He had previously criticized News Corp's editorial decision and said he disagreed with Fox News' coverage.

James has launched his own private holding company, Lupa system which has invested in Vice Media among other things.

Media scion James Murdoch quits News Corp board

Issued on: 01/08/2020 -
New York (AFP)

Former 21st Century Fox chief executive James Murdoch, the son of media tycoon Rupert Murdoch, has resigned from News Corp's board citing clashes over editorial content, US regulators said.

The 47-year-old once seen as his father's successor has been openly critical of some media coverage from publishing empire News Corp's outlets in recent months.

According to a letter written by James Murdoch and released Friday by the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), his resignation was due to "disagreements over certain editorial content published by the company's news outlets and certain other strategic decisions".

News Corp owns the Wall Street Journal, the New York Post, The Times and the Sun newspapers among others, but not Rupert Murdoch's Fox News network.

James Murdoch's decision reinforces his disengagement from the family media empire, which grew from a newspaper group in Australia.

In January, he denounced the climate change skepticism of some Murdoch media, citing coverage of the fires which devastated large parts of Australia.

In a statement, widely reported by US media at the time, Murdoch and his wife spoke of their "frustration" with some of the News Corp and Fox coverage, adding that they were "particularly disappointed with the ongoing denial among the news outlets in Australia given obvious evidence to the contrary."

Rupert Murdoch has said he does not employ climate change deniers, and has previously described himself as a climate "sceptic".

The pair have also diverged politically.

While Rupert Murdoch has been a longtime supporter of Republican President Donald Trump, his son has reportedly donated hundreds of thousands to Democrat challenger Joe Biden's 2020 campaign.

James Murdoch, who headed 21st Century Fox until he stepped down last year when Disney acquired most of the group's assets, has launched his own private holding company called Lupa Systems, which has taken a stake in Vice Media.

"We're grateful to James for his many years of service to the company. We wish him the very best in his future endeavors," said Rupert Murdoch, executive chairman of News Corp and James's brother Lachlan Murdoch in a statement.

© 2020 AFP

Media scion James Murdoch quits News Corp board

James Murdoch, who has resigned from News Corp, has been critical of the business and its media coverage

Former 21st Century Fox chief executive James Murdoch, son of media tycoon Rupert Murdoch, has resigned from News Corp's board, according to a document released Friday by the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).

A letter sent by James Murdoch to the board said the decision was due to "disagreements over certain editorial content published by the company's news outlets and certain other strategic decisions."

News Corp owns the Wall Street Journal, the New York Post, The Times and the Sun newspapers among others, but not Rupert Murdoch's Fox News network.

James Murdoch was once seen as his father's successor, but Friday's move reinforces his disengagement from the family media empire, which grew from a newspaper group in Australia.

Murdoch, Rupert's younger son, headed 21st Century Fox until last year when he left after Disney acquired most of the group's assets.

James Murdoch, 47, has recently been critical of his father's business and its media coverage.

In January, he denounced the climate change skepticism of some Murdoch media, citing coverage of the fires which devastated large parts of Australia.

He has launched his own private holding company called Lupa Systems, which among other things has taken a stake in Vice Media.

"We're grateful to James for his many years of service to the company. We wish him the very best in his future endeavors," said Rupert Murdoch, executive chairman of News Corp and James's brother Lachlan Murdoch in a statemen

James Murdoch takes stake in Vice Media: report

Australia unveils law forcing tech giants to pay for news

by David Millikin

Facebook and Google have strongly opposed any move forcing them to share advertising revenue

Australia unveiled a draft law Friday to force Google and Facebook to pay news media for their content or face huge fines in one of the most aggressive moves by any government to curb the power of the US digital giants.

Treasurer Josh Frydenberg announced the "mandatory code of conduct" to govern relations between the struggling news industry and the tech firms after 18 months of negotiations failed to bring the two sides together.

In addition to payment for content, the code covers issues like access to user data and transparency around the algorithms used to rank content in the platforms' news feeds and search results.

"Nothing less than the future of the Australian media landscape is at stake with these changes," Frydenberg said, calling the legislation a "world-leading regulatory framework".

He said legislation implementing the code would be introduced to parliament in the coming weeks after a final round of consultations—and would include "substantial penalties" that could cost the tech companies hundreds of millions of dollars.

While the code could eventually apply to any digital platform, Frydenberg said it would initially focus on Facebook and Google, two of the world's richest and most powerful companies.

Google responded quickly, saying it was "deeply disappointed" with the proposal.

The coronavirus pandemic has only deepened the crisis in the news industry

"The government's heavy-handed intervention threatens to impede Australia's digital economy and impacts the services we can deliver to Australians," said Mel Silva, Google's managing director for Australia and New Zealand.

Facebook issued a terse one-line response that hinted it could reconsider its activites in Australia if the proposals were implemented.

"We are reviewing the government's proposal to understand the impact it will have on the industry, our services and our investment in the news ecosystem in Australia," said Will Easton, Facebook's local manager.

The initiative has been closely watched around the globe as news media worldwide have suffered in an increasingly digital economy, where advertising revenue is overwhelmingly captured by Facebook, Google and other big tech firms.

The crisis has been exacerbated by the economic collapse caused by the coronavirus pandemic, with dozens of Australian newspapers closed and hundreds of journalists sacked in recent months.

Unlike other countries' so-far unsuccessful efforts to force the platforms to pay for news, the Australian initiative uses competition law and not copyright regulations to challenge what Australia calls an "acute bargaining power imbalance" between media and the US giants.

The government said 'nothing less than the future of the Australian media landscape is at stake with these changes'

'We want it to be fair'

The move has been strongly pushed by Australia's two biggest media companies, Rupert Murdoch's News Corp and Nine Entertainment, who stand to gain the most from the crackdown.

News Corp Australasia executive chairman Michael Miller called Friday's announcement a "watershed moment" and declared the "platforms' days of free-riding are ending".

Frydenberg warned Google and Facebook that any "discrimination" against Australian media as a result of the new law would be considered a punishable breach of the code.

He said the aim was "not to protect Australian news media businesses from competition, or from disruption that's occurring across this sector" but rather "to create a level playing field".

"We want Google and Facebook to continue to provide these services to the Australian community which are so much loved and used by Australians.

"But we want it to be on our terms. We want it to be in accordance with our law. And we want it to be fair."

Advertising revenue is now overwhelmingly captured by the likes of Facebook, whose CEO Mark Zuckerberg testified this week at US antitrust hearings

Under the code, drawn up by the Australian anti-trust watchdog ACCC, tech companies will be required to negotiate with news firms "in good faith" over payments for use of their content.

If agreement cannot be reached within three months, the issue will go to binding arbitration.

Violations of the code will draw penalties of up to Aus$10 million (US$7 million) per breach or 10 percent of the company's local turnover, which the ACCC has estimated at some US$4 billion annually.

Both Facebook and Google say advertising revenue linked to news content is a small fraction of their overall revenue and that they have contributed hundreds of millions of dollars to local news media by driving traffic to their online services, providing grants and purchasing some content.

But ACCC chief Rod Sims said Friday such efforts failed to address the unfair power wielded by the tech titans.

"We wanted a model that would address this bargaining power imbalance and result in fair payment for content, which avoided unproductive and drawn-out negotiations, and wouldn't reduce the availability of Australian news on Google and Facebook," he said.

Australia to make Google and Facebook pay for news content

BIG BROTHER ZUCKERBERG

Facebook quarterly profit rockets despite ad boycott, pandemic

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg discussed the social network's quarterly results a day after his testimony by video, seen here, before a congressional antitrust panel

Facebook reported Thursday that its quarterly profit had nearly doubled and users grew despite a boycott by advertisers and the pandemic-induced economic turmoil.

The leading social network said it made a profit of $5.2 billion on $18.7 billion in revenue in the recently ended quarter, as the number of people using the platform monthly rose to 2.7 billion.

"This was a strong quarter for us, especially compared to what we expected at the start," chief executive Mark Zuckerberg said.

Shares in the Silicon Valley-based technology giant were up six percent in after-market trades following release of the earnings figures.

The number of people using the tech giant's overall "family" of apps including WhatsApp and Messenger each month topped three billion, according to Zuckerberg.

Zuckerberg said he could not predict when Facebook employees would return their offices, in light of surge in coronavirus cases.

"It is incredibly disappointing because it seems like the US could have avoided this current surge in cases if our government had handled this better," Zuckerberg said.

Facebook expected as much as half of its employees to be working from home on a long-term basis in the next five to ten years.

Defending the story

Zuckerberg sought to highlight the importance of technology firms during the crisis, as he recounted his testimony at a Congressional antitrust hearing along with CEOs of Apple, Amazon, and Alphabet at a panel investigating market dominance.

"As I said yesterday the tech industry is an American success story," Zuckerberg said.

"Products, we build have changed the world for the better and improved people's lives."

Use of Facebook has surged as people staying close to home due to the pandemic turn to the platform to virtually connect with friends and loved ones.

"Imagine going through this pandemic two decades ago when the internet was nascent Facebook didn't even exist,"Zuckerberg said.

He remained adamant that Facebook does not want hate speech on the social network, despite criticism that the social network does not do enough to fight misinformation and vitriol.

Organizers of a Facebook ad boycott have vowed to continue their campaign, saying the social network's top executives have failed to offer meaningful action on curbing hateful content.

The boycott aimed at pressing Facebook to act on toxic and hateful content has the support of more than 900 companies and organizations.

Zuckerberg said he was "troubled" by calls for regulators to make it more difficult to target advertising, saying such a move would hurt businesses trying to connect with customers, especially during economic turmoil.

"This would reduce opportunities for small businesses so much that would probably be felt at a macroeconomic level," Zuckerberg said.

Facebook's Zuckerberg to meet activists, won't act on boycott

There aren't enough batteries to electrify all cars: Focus on trucks and buses instead

by Cameron Roberts, The Conversation

We need to change our transportation system, and we need to do it quickly.

Road transportation is a major consumer of fossil fuels, contributing 16 percent of all human-caused greenhouse gas emissions, which warm up the Earth's atmosphere and cause changes to the climate. It also pollutes the air, threatening health and costing taxpayers billions of dollars annually.

At the same time, electric vehicles are getting cheaper, and vehicle range and the availability of charging stations are improving. This is exciting for many because it seems to suggest an easy and convenient answer to the problem of transportation emissions: if everyone swapped their fossil-fuelled vehicle for an electric equivalent, we could all keep driving, safe in the knowledge that we are no longer killing the planet by doing so—and all while enjoying a new car that is quiet, cheap to power and fun to drive.

Everybody wins, right? Unfortunately, it's unlikely to be that simple.

The battery supply crunch

Electric vehicles still produce air pollution and greenhouse gasses from their brakes, tires, the electricity that powers them and the factories that build them. Even if we can address (or ignore) these problems, there is a much larger stumbling block facing personal electric vehicles as a solution for climate change.

In 2019, the world produced about 160 gigawatt hours (GWh) of lithium-ion batteries. That's enough for a little more than three million standard-range Tesla Model 3s—and only if we use those batteries for cars, and don't build any smart-phones, laptops or grid storage facilities.

The battery production capacity currently under construction will allow the production of the equivalent of 40 million electric vehicles annually by 2028, according to one estimate.

That sounds like a lot until you see that the world produced nearly 100 million cars, vans, busses, and trucks in 2019 alone. There are around 1.4 billion motor vehicles in the world today—a number that will almost certainly continue to increase if we don't take major steps to shift transportation onto other modes.

Even at the projected 2028 level of battery production capacity, it would take us 35 years to replace this global vehicle fleet with electric models. That's not nearly fast enough to avoid the worst consequences of climate change.

Maximizing climate impact

The unavoidable conclusion is that we will not be able to electrify all of our transportation in the timeframe necessary to deal with climate change. Some journeys will have to be decarbonized through other means, such as cycling, walking, public transit or telecommuting.

Lithium-ion batteries should therefore go primarily to vehicles intended for long distances or large cargo loads. Garbage trucks, busses, pickup trucks used by skilled tradespeople to get to job sites and the van that delivers your Amazon purchases are all prime candidates for electrification.

That Nissan Leaf you've been eyeing, unfortunately is not. You can probably travel on a bicycle or a city bus much more easily than a truckload of power tools, parcels or municipal waste can.

A win-win scenario

There are a lot of side benefits to focusing on commercial vehicles for electrification. Currently, these vehicles often burn diesel, which produces 100 times more particulate pollution than gasoline vehicles.

Diesel vehicles were responsible for approximately 83 percent of all deaths due to air pollution from road vehicles in 2015, according to the World Health Organization. Diesel freight vehicles also tend to be noisy—a problem that is almost entirely eliminated by going electric.

For us in Canada, perhaps the greatest benefit to a focus on electrifying the commercial vehicle fleet is that several companies here are already emerging as leaders in developing and building them. Lion Electric, in Saint-Jérôme, Que., makes electric busses, trucks and school busses. New Flyer, based in Winnipeg, has already sold electric transit busses to several major American cities.

And Green Jobs Oshawa has already developed a plan to convert the Oshawa General Motors facility to the produce electric vehicles for the Canadian public sector. Our car sector is struggling, but a focus on building commercial electric vehicles could bring jobs back to this area in a big way.

There's no way around it: We need fewer cars

As for the rest of us, the solution to zero-carbon mobility looks much more like a bike, a bus seat, a home office, a mobility scooter or a well-worn pair of shoes than a shiny new Tesla.

Some of these solutions can still take advantage of electric mobility without straining the global battery budget. With just over five percent of 2019's lithium-ion battery production, for example, there would be enough batteries to provide an Urban Machina electric scooter to every Canadian.

There is already talk of a federal government bail-out of the Canadian car industry, with stakeholders suggesting that this could be an opportunity to encourage the development of electric vehicle production in Canada.

If the government wants to do this in a way that has the greatest impact on the climate, it should look beyond supporting fancy personal vehicles, and turn its attention instead to the unglamorous workhorses that make our society function.

Clean energy grids and electric vehicles key to beating climate change and air pollution

Provided by The Conversation

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Plug it in: Electric car charging station numbers are rising

by Tom Krisher

When the electric car revolution arrives, will there be enough places to plug in?

There are now 26,000 electric vehicle charging stations open to the public in the U.S., with more than 84,000 plugs.

But the country, and the world, will need thousands more if drivers are going to adopt vehicles powered by batteries alone. And because they're being asked to invest before that demand arrives, automakers and charging companies are struggling to raise the numbers.

Currently electric vehicles make up only about 1.3% of total new vehicle sales in the U.S., according to the Edmunds.com auto site. Electrics are much bigger in other countries, accounting for 2.6% of global new vehicle sales last year, the International Energy Agency says.

With more than 40 fully electric vehicles on the market in the U.S. or coming within the next three years, however, auto and charging company executives say the demand is on the way.

"The automakers, more and more of them, are committing to manufacture electric vehicles," said Mike Moran, spokesman for Electrify America, a network of charging stations being built with $2 billion in settlement money from Volkswagen's diesel emissions cheating scandal. "Last year automakers announced a combined $225 billion in investments in electrification."

On Friday, General Motors and charging company EVGo announced plans to add about 700 fast-charging stations, tripling the number on the EVGo network over the next five years. They wouldn't say how much they'll invest, but plan to add 2,700 fast-charging plugs.

They'll focus on 40 unspecified metropolitan areas, with emphasis on California, Texas, Florida and Illinois. And they'll build the stations near where people go to run errands, like grocery stores or pharmacies. Typically a fast-charger can refill a battery in 30-40 minutes, so the idea is for charging to be done while people are shopping.

"We've done extensive consumer research in understanding what's important to the customer," GM CEO Mary Barra said. "Clearly having a robust charging infrastructure is something that our customers have told us is important."

Detroit-based GM says it's moving away from the internal combustion engine to an all-electric future, and it plans to roll out 20 new electric vehicles globally by 2023. Crosstown rival Ford has an all-electric SUV coming with 300 miles (480 kilometers) of range, and it's planning a fully electric version of the F-150 pickup, the nation's top-selling vehicle.

Fast-charging stations have higher kilowatt capacities than home chargers, and they're important to quickly recharge batteries on newer electric vehicles that can travel 300 or more miles on a single charge. But the bulk of the nation's public charging network is much slower. The U.S. Department of Energy says there are 3,884 public fast-charging stations in the country now with 14,858 outlets.

As more electric vehicles are sold, more fast chargers will be needed, especially for people who live in apartment buildings who can't charge at home, said Cathy Zoi, EVGo's CEO.

The 2,700 new fast-charging outlets will start to become available early next year. GM and EVGo say they'll invest in the outlets, but many will be built with funding from utilities, governments and public-private partnerships.

More public charging stations will allow GM and other automakers to better compete with Tesla, which now leads the world in electric vehicle sales and has its own private network of fast-charging stations. Tesla has network of 1,971 charging stations with 17,467 outlets worldwide. A U.S. number wasn't available.

Electrify America now has over 450 charging stations in the U.S. with more than 2,000 fast-charging outlets, Moran said. It plans to have 800 stations and about 3,500 outlets by the end of next year.

Guidehouse analyst Sam Abuelsamid said the number of chargers is increasing rapidly and should be enough to meet demand as more electric vehicles are sold. A big problem now is that each network has its own payment system, so owners need multiple accounts to access all chargers, he said. But Ford, GM and others are working to aggregate all the networks into one account.

"As more and more vehicles come to market that support faster charging and have longer ranges, especially with aggregating, enabling roaming, that's where I think it will start to make a difference," he said.

European carmakers build out charging network for electrics

THE ROBOTS ARE COMING BOW WOW
Ford puts robotic dogs in driver's seat at manufacturing plant
by Peter Grad , Tech Xplore

Credit: Ford

A Ford plant in Michigan has gone to the dogs.

In this case, the four-legged beasts are robotic, and they promise to usher in a new era of computer-aided design and economic efficiencies for the auto manufacturer.

The two pooches—Fluffy and Spot—were manufactured by Boston Dynamics, which specializes in sophisticated robotic construction.

Their tasks will be to traverse the Van Dyke Transmission Plant in Sterling Heights, Michigan, and scan the layout to help engineers create more efficient layouts for periodic upgrading and retooling projects.

Each dog is equipped with five cameras capable of 360-degree scans. They can trot at speeds up to 3 mph and navigate stairs up to a 30-degree angle. Battery time is somewhat limited at just under two hours. But a more robust companion robot, Scouter, serves as a chauffeur for the digital pooches for lengthier jaunts throughout the plant. Scouter, which is larger and bulkier and cannot access many areas Fluffy and Spot can, allows the two to conserve battery power.

Based on early runs, the two new pets may well earn the greeting, "Good dogs!" Mark Goderis, digital engineering manager at Ford, explains how the dogs improved on what used to be a long and expensive scanning task:

"We used to use a tripod, and we would walk around the facility stopping at different locations, each time standing around for five minutes waiting for the laser to scan," Goderis said. "Scanning one plant could take two weeks. With Fluffy's help, we are able to do it in half the time."

Goderis said the manufacturing plant undergoes a number of changes and modifications over the years, many of which go undocumented.

"By having the robots scan our facility, we can see what it actually looks like now and build a new engineering model. That digital model is then used when we need to retool the plant for new products."

Scanning projects generally run around $300,000. Fluffy and Spot (Spot is the official name for the line of robots) are expected to help slash that figure significantly.

The robots can be operated from distances up to 164 feet away. Eventually, remote applications will be developed that will permit control from anywhere around the globe.

Jul 27, 2020

Four-legged robots

DEARBORN, MI. July 27, 2020 – Paula Wiebelhaus, Fluffy’s handler, navigates Fluffy, the dog-like robot through tough-to-reach areas within the plant. Ford is tapping four-legged robots at its Van Dyke Transmission Plant in early August to laser scan the plant, helping engineers update the original computer-aided design. These robots can be deployed into tough-to-reach areas within the plant to scan the area with laser scanners and high-definition cameras, collecting data used to retool plants, saving Ford engineers time and money. Ford is leasing two robots, nicknamed Fluffy and Spot, from Boston Dynamics – a company known for building sophisticated mobile robots.

More information: https://media.ford.com/content/fordmedia/fna/us/en/news/2020/07/27/no-bones-about-it-ford-experiments-with-four-legged-robots.html …

The computerized canines are indeed a rare breed; they cost $75,000 apiece. Ford currently is leasing the pair.

Boston Dynamics has dispatched Spot's cousins to other spots around the world.

The Norwegian oil exploration and development company Aker BP ASA plans on utilizing Spot's stereo scanning capacity, obstacle avoidance systems and onboard sensors to track down gas leaks and transmit weather conditions from the sea. These operations can be conducted in locations unreachable by workers and for tasks too risky for humans.

On a farm in New Zealand, the robots are being used to monitor the growth of crops as well as to herd sheep.

At Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston, a robotic dog has been retrofitted with iPads to allow doctors to remotely examine and communicate with COVID-19 patients.

"Originally, we were just talking to them without there having to be a health worker there. Now we're making vital measurements like respiration rate, body temperature," Boston Dynamics founder Marc Raibert said in a CNBC interview. "We're working on oxygenation and heart rate, all that can be done without contact, even with a robot."

And in Singapore, robots are being used to monitor social distancing practices in public parks. This relieves human personnel from risky exposure to infected individuals and to ornery citizens who flout local regulations. The dogs can broadcast messages and warnings to individuals reminding them to take proper precautions.

Unlike their live counterparts trained in crowd control by police, the digital dogs are not programmed to tackle or bite scofflaws.

Not yet, anyway.

Explore further Dog-like robots now on sale for $75,000, with conditions

BYE BYE BOMBARDIER UPDATED

All aboard: EU approves Alstom's purchase of Bombardier rail unit

Issued on: 31/07/2020 -

A commuter waits on a platform alongside old and new models of SNCF Bombardier suburban trains at the Gare Saint-Lazare railway station on February 15, 2018 in Paris, France. © Ludovic Marin, AFP

Text by:NEWS WIRES

The European Commission gave French engineering giant Alstom the green light to buy Canadian train-maker Bombardier Transport on Friday, a year-and-a-half after blocking a mega-merger with Germany's Siemens.

Paris and Berlin were infuriated when Brussels blocked the former plan to build an all European giant but the Canadian tie-up should now go ahead -- with conditions.

Alstom will have to divest itself of some of its plants, but the new entity could still be of a scale to compete with the Chinese world-leader in the sector, CRRC.

"Going forward, a stronger combined Alstom and Bombardier entity will emerge," EU competition commissioner Margrethe Vestager said.

"Thanks to the comprehensive remedies offered to solve the competition concerns ... the Commission has been able to speedily review and approve this transaction."

#BREAKING The European Commission said Friday that it had given conditional approval to French engineering giant Alstom buying Canadian train-maker Bombardier Transport pic.twitter.com/1NcaFwxbSH— AFP news agency (@AFP) July 31, 2020
Alstom's chief executive, Henri Poupart-Lafarge, had earlier in the day expressed confidence the decision would go his way this time.

"The dialogue with Brussels has been extremely fluid, extremely rapid since we announced the transaction with Bombardier in February, so five months later we have the decision," he stressed.

"I believe that a dialogue of trust has been established. Is this the consequence of the difficulties of the previous dossier or not? I don't know," he added, referring to the blocked Siemens tie-up.

In order to appease Vestager's anti-trust concerns, Alstom gave an undertaking to sell off some of its assets, including a French plant in Reichshoffen in Alsace which employs 780 people.

Before these concessions, the new group would have had a turnover of 15.5 billion euros per year and 76,000 employees.
'Fed and pampered'

Had the European Commission been worried that the project might have hurt competition, it could have launched a more detailed investigation, which would have lasted about four months.

Alstom had notified Brussels in mid-June of the planned acquisition of its competitor Bombardier Transport for six billion euros in a deal to be finalised in the first half of 2021.

Press release] @EU_Competition clears Alstom’s acquisition of Bombardier Transportation https://t.co/z1Zj2pbtHH pic.twitter.com/0phDLjeKNw— Alstom (@Alstom) July 31, 2020

The two groups have a virtual monopoly on rolling stock in France, where they work together regularly, as they do on the Paris Metro and RER suburban transport network.

The threat of Chinese competition had already been cited as a reason for Siemens' planned takeover of Alstom, which was blocked by the Commission in February 2019.

But Brussels feared an overly dominant position in Europe in rail signalling and high-speed trains.

The EU should not help to create "fed and pampered" industrial champions, but let competition drive innovation, Vestager had argued.

Alstom had fewer overlapping operations with Bombardier than with the German group, which helped win approval of the deal.

Bombardier's subsidiary Bombardier Transportation is based in Berlin and runs the largest railway plant in France, with 2,000 employees, in Crespin in the north of the country.

Alstom, meanwhile, operates many smaller sites and last year, before the coronavirus crisis, its order book peaked at 40.9 billion euros.

EU approves Alstom buying Bombardier Transport

by Clément Zampa

The Canadian tie-up should now go ahead—with conditions

The European Commission gave French engineering giant Alstom the green light to buy Canadian train-maker Bombardier Transport on Friday, a year-and-a-half after blocking a mega-merger with Germany's Siemens.

Paris and Berlin were infuriated when Brussels blocked the former plan to build an all European giant but the Canadian tie-up should now go ahead—with conditions.

Alstom will have to divest itself of some of its plants, but the new entity could still be of a scale to compete with the Chinese world-leader in the sector, CRRC.

"Going forward, a stronger combined Alstom and Bombardier entity will emerge," EU competition commissioner Margrethe Vestager said.

"Thanks to the comprehensive remedies offered to solve the competition concerns ... the Commission has been able to speedily review and approve this transaction."

Alstom's chief executive, Henri Poupart-Lafarge, had earlier in the day expressed confidence the decision would go his way this time.

"The dialogue with Brussels has been extremely fluid, extremely rapid since we announced the transaction with Bombardier in February, so five months later we have the decision," he stressed.

"I believe that a dialogue of trust has been established. Is this the consequence of the difficulties of the previous dossier or not? I don't know," he added, referring to the blocked Siemens tie-up.

In order to appease Vestager's anti-trust concerns, Alstom gave an undertaking to sell off some of its assets, including a French plant in Reichshoffen in Alsace which employs 780 people.

Before these concessions, the new group would have had a turnover of 15.5 billion euros per year and 76,000 employees.

'Fed and pampered'

Had the European Commission been worried that the project might have had hurt competition, it could have launched a more detailed investigation, which would have lasted about four months.

Alstom had notified Brussels in mid-June of the planned acquisition of its competitor Bombardier Transport for six billion euros in a deal to be finalised in the first half of 2021.

The two groups have a virtual monopoly on rolling stock in France, where they work together regularly, as they do on the Paris Metro and RER suburban transport network.

The threat of Chinese competition had already been cited as a reason for Siemens' planned takeover of Alstom, which was blocked by the Commission in February 2019.

But Brussels feared an overly dominant position in Europe in rail signalling and high-speed trains.

The EU should not help to create "fed and pampered" industrial champions, but let competition drive innovation, Vestager had argued.

Alstom had fewer overlapping operations with Bombardier than with the German group, which helped win approval of the deal.

Bombardier's subsidiary Bombardier Transportation is based in Berlin and runs the largest railway plant in France, with 2,000 employees, in Crespin in the north of the country.

Alstom, meanwhile, operates many smaller sites and last year, before the coronavirus crisis, its order book peaked at 40.9 billion euros.

Alstom agrees to buy Bombardier's rail division

LA REVUE GAUCHE - Left Comment