Inflight Magazine of Brussels Airlines
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Boyd Farrow rounds-up what’s happening in the business world across Europe
Radar
The profitable adventures of Tintin
Three months into its 80th anniversary year, the Tintin franchise looks set to enter the stratosphere. Steven Spielberg’s big-screen adaptation of the comic book hero is firming up with the casting of Jamie (Billy Elliot) Bell, as “the voice and movement” for the Belgian cub reporter in the animated The Adventures of Tintin: Secret of the Unicorn. The project has taken almost 30 years to get even this far. Spielberg, who bought the rights to create a Tintin film from its Belgian creator, Hergé, in 1982, has said he wants to collaborate with Peter (Lord of the Rings) Jackson, on up to three Tintin adventures. Daniel Craig will “play” the villain Red Rackham and the cast includes Simon Pegg and Nick Frost as Thomson and Thompson, the inept bowler-hatted detectives. The real winner, though, is British entrepreneur Nick Rodwell, who took charge of Moulinsart – which owns the rights to all Tintin merchandising – following his marriage to the widow of Tintin creator Hergé. Moulinsart, with an annual turnover of €16m and 40 staff, markets books about Hergé, clothes and toy cars, but makes most of its money from licensing deals. Luxury Belgian chocolate maker Neuhaus, for example, market their goods in Tintin boxes. Tintin’s 80th anniversary officially begins with a Tintin Festival in the Belgian city of Namur in May and an appearance at the Europalia China exhibition in October. Meanwhile a Tintin museum is set to open in Brussels this summer.
Drawing board
Music biz on new track
After years of trying to protect its content and sue anyone who illegally downloaded it, the music industry is finally beginning to steal ideas from the pirates. The industry is signing deals with all manner of online retailers and telecom companies who are adding free music as a way of growing loyalty and reducing the number of users who churn off the service. Nokia, the world’s top mobile phone maker, trialled a phone model with an unlimited music bundle, called Comes With Music, in the UK in 2008, in a bid to challenge the dominance of Apple’s iPhone. Now the Finnish phone giant has signed a pan-European licensing deal with major record labels Universal, EMI and Sony. Its service will be rolled out throughout Spain, Italy, France, Finland, Sweden and Noway within the next few months. The Advertising-supported music services are also poised to take off in the next few months thanks to MySpace Music – a joint venture between the social network and the four major music labels. Legal digital global sales grew by an estimated 25% to €3.7bn in trade value in 2008, to account for about 20% of the industry’s global recorded music sales, according to trade body IFPI. Nevertheless 95% of the music downloaded in 2008 was illegal and not paid for.
Traffic report
Social issues
More than a third of Danish internet users have created a profile on the social networking site Facebook, giving Denmark a top position, according to Danish newspaper, Berlingske Tidende. Currently, some 1.8 million out of the 5.5 million Danish nationals, or 34% are registered on Facebook. This percentage puts the country past Canada where 33% of the population had registered a profile in January.
Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen used Facebook during the election campaign 2007 and claimed “more friends” than opposition leader Helle Thorning Schmidt of the Social Democrats. The Danish newspaper was citing a a survey by IT company Komfo, which concluded that an unusually high proportion of Danish Facebook users were middle-aged or elderly. This, says Komfo chief Rasmus Moller-Nielsen, means that “Facebook faces some challenges in Denmark. The older users demand greater quality of content”. Or at least larger text.
Not on really…
On the menu
A week after Premier Silvio Berlusconi suggested that the army should patrol the parts of Rome where Romanian immigrants and gypsies live, a government-backed campaign has been launched in Italy against… ethnic food. A council ban on all new ethnic food outlets has spread throughout Lombardy and its regional capital, Milan. The anti-immigrant Northern League party says the ban will “protect local specialities” while Luca Zaia, the agriculture minister and a member of the Northern League, told La Stampa, that ethnic restaurants allowed to operate “whether they serve kebabs, sushi or Chinese food” should use only Italian ingredients. Moreover, Davide Boni, a councillor in Milan for the Northern League, wailed that kebab shop owners worked long hours, which was “unfair” competition. The ban is a huge blow to immigrants; Milan has 668 ethnic restaurants, up nearly 30% on a year ago. The centre Right won national elections a year ago partly because of alarm about immigration. The centre-left calls the latest campaign discrimination amounting to “culinary ethnic cleansing”. Meanwhile celebrity chef Vittorio Castellani has pointed out that many Italian dishes were actually imported. The San Marzano tomato, a staple of pasta sauces, came from Peru and spaghetti probably came from China.
Why are we here?
At a South American bus stop
Germany’s manufacturing-oriented economy may be hurting because so many of its traditional customers can no longer afford to buy its goods, but the country still has one thing it can export – its legendary Teutonic punctuality. Berlin-based IVU Traffic Technologies has just signed a contract worth €17m to fix Cali, the third biggest city in Colombia, which is on the verge of transportation collapse. IVU hopes to make Cali’s fleet of a thousand buses as punctual as any train or bus in Munich or Berlin by installing its software in the city’s control centre and on a new generation of vehicles. One new innovation at bus stops looks sure to cause much excitement in chaotic Columbia: departure times will be displayed for the first time ever. Signaling even more ambition, the city will also post information about routes and connections online. It’s too early to say how passengers will greet the promised efficiency but the city’s bus drivers seem up for the challenge. A lot is riding on the service for IVU: if the venture succeeds, the Germans hope to advance throughout Latin America. Cali’s new buses will be on the roads at the end of 2009 – assuming they’re on time.
Upgrade your trip
Friends in hot places
There seems no end to the boom in hotels in revitalised Madrid, the latest being the 480-room Eurostars Madrid Tower, which has opened in one of the four sky scrapers in the city’s new growing business hub, the Cuatro Torres area. But one of the best value options remains the four separate properties which are part of the expanding Room Mate chain. Each hotel, named after an imagined roommate, has its own personality, as interpreted by a crew of hot young interior designers. There is: Alicia, which looks out over Santa Ana, the city’s hottest area; Laura, which has apartments nextdoor to Puerta del Sol, calle Arenal, Gran Vía and the Royal Palace; Oscar, in one of the city’s most laidback neighbourhoods; and the very first Room Mate, Mario, next to the Teatro Real. All hotels have free Wi-fi and doubles are from €100 a night. The Room Mate chain also has hotels in Granada, Malaga, Oviedo, Salamanca, Valencia and another in Barcelona is planned to open later this year. www.room-matehotels.com
Traffic report
Red squarebashing
An Opus Energy survey of 500 small businesses found that 19% said cutting their travel costs was a priority, while only 18% listed cutbacks in advertising spend and 17% planned to reduce staff bonuses. Those companies looking to cut travel costs will have their work cut out trying to find a reasonably priced bed in Moscow. The Russian capital remains the most expensive city in the world for its clients, with an average rate of €340m, according to the annual hotels survey carried out by business travel management company HRG. Moscow was followed by New York, Paris, Mumbai and Abu Dhabi in the rankings. Abu Dhabi’s rates have increased by 36% this year, in part because of demand outstripping supply.
Growing gains
Sweet opportunities
There is a special place in the hearts (and stomachs) of those who grew up in communist East Germany for the Hallorenkugel – a chocolate-coated ball of cream. But the 205 year-old company behind the treat, Halloren Schokoladenfabrik, is expanding like Augustus Gloop. Indeed, with €35m predicted for its 2008 revenues, a 16% jump from a year earlier, the Frankfurt-listed company is planning to gobble up at least three recession-hit rivals, including ”a praline” company says chief executive Klaus Lelle. Halloren has already gained national recognition and market share after swallowing three other chocolatiers within eight years. The company, valued at €22m, even beat Nestle and Mars in a 2007 survey of sweet brands trusted by Germans conducted by Reader’s Digest magazine. It ranked sixth, trailing Haribo, the German maker of gummi bears, Kraft Foods Inc.’s Milka chocolate and Lindt, Switzerland’s oldest chocolatier. Audaciously, last year, Halloren won the contract to make all the chocolates for Swiss hotel and restaurant company Moevenpick Group. Halloren’s success is down to the fact that it sells as much as 10% of output under other retailer’s trade names. Clients include Germany’s two largest food retailers Metro and Rewe Group as well as Aldi and Lidl. German chocolatiers collectively raked in €3.38bn in the first nine months of 2008, up 6.4% from a year earlier, according to researcher Nielsen. Germans eat 9.4 kg of chocolate products a year, spending about €45 each according to figures from Germany’s industry association. Lelle says he eats 450g of chocolate a week.
Radar
Sweden gets tongue-tied
While workers throughout Europe become more agitated about other nations nabbing their jobs, the Swedes have managed to add a new wrinkle to the debate. Staff at a telemarketing company, Business by Phone, in central Sweden complained to broadcaster TV4 that they were encouraged to use more Swedish-sounding names in order to increase sales. Indeed, out of the company’s 20 employees, 14 claim they were forced to use made-up, “Swedish” names in order to hide their ethnic background. The case has attracted much publicity in equality-obsessed Sweden with the country’s Equality Ombudsman emphasising on television that it is unacceptable to argue that customers don’t want to buy things from salespeople with foreign backgrounds. Ironically, the Swedish government has just pledged to do more to promote the country’s official minority languages. Since 2000, Finnish, all Sami dialects, Romani and, er, Yiddish have had special status. The government plans to set aside €6m from 2010 to reform national minority policies, a sevenfold increase. The government says people who want to use Finnish or Sami should have the right to do so. It also wants state agencies to make an effort to hire employees who are fluent in the languages.
IN POLITICS
Brigid Grauman snoops around Brussels’ corridors of power
Eurocrats and Brussels
The Eurocrats – Brussels’ European officials – have an uneasy and ambivalent relationship with the city they call home. Many find it a comfortable, inexpensive place to live, but they seldom really know it and they’re usually not that interested. Their overall impression is that the city is cosmopolitan but badly run, and that its politics are hellishly complicated.
Recently, Brussels’ VUB and ULB universities joined forces to organise master-classes about the city as European capital, on behalf of the Brussels region.
Over three months, 30 Commission officials attended lectures on local history, institutional complexities and urban expansion, and visited such cultural beacons as the BOZAR arts centre.
Behind the project is Eric Corijn, Professor of Social and Cultural Geography at VUB. “We felt the two big universities should give European officials access to our extensive research in urban studies. If Brussels is to truly become the capital of Europe, it’s vital for European officials to co-produce the urban project,” he says.
Corijn is pleased with the exercise and feels that he and his team successfully conveyed their fascination for Brussels. “We took them to all sorts of places they didn’t know – the canals, Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker’s dance company…” What it all boils down to, claims Corijn, is that if Brussels is to be an exemplary capital, urban development can’t be divorced from its European role. And the European institutions must be involved with the city as a whole. Wishful thinking?
Czech iconoclast
This is the European Year of Creativity and Innovation, and I’d like to put David Cerny top on my list of contenders for first prize. He’s the Czech artist who mocked the worlds of officialdom and art with Entropa, the giant installation he produced for Brussels’ Council of Ministers’ building to celebrate the six-month Czech presidency.
Cerny says he wanted Europeans to laugh at themselves, but Czech officials didn’t see the joke. The most provocative of the sculpture’s representations of national stereotypes depicted France on strike and Bulgaria as a primitive lavatory. Although Cerny was in overall charge of the project, each national symbol was meant to be designed by an artist from that country. But, instead, it turned out that Cerny and two associates had done it all, right down to writing fake biographies of the artists and their descriptions of the work.
The Czech Government should have looked more closely at Cerny’s track record before commissioning him. He came to fame by painting a Soviet tank – a World War II memorial – pink.
Commission’s green credentials
Brussels’ Berlaymont HQ draws water from the Maelbeek river for its sanitation, has automated lights that switch on only when they detect the presence of people in a room, and relies on co-generation of heat and electricity from the same source. The louvres on its imposing façades change angle throughout the day by responding to light intelligently, there’s an underground pool for use in the cooling system that produces ice at night when electricity is cheap, and the hot water in the taps isn’t really hot. “We are trying to be as green as we can,” says Daniele Dotto, who’s in charge of strategic planning and evaluation at the Commission. “I wouldn’t venture to say that we’re the world’s greenest international institution, but we’re not doing badly for a 40-year-old building whose redesign was 10 years ago.”
And that’s not all. Commission staff have access to a fleet of bicycles for travelling between offices, and the cars of the top brass – commissioners and director-generals – always have the marque’s smallest engine. With the BMWs and Mercedes that are the limousines of choice, this means no need for temper tantrums.
Blair for President?
In EU politics, what goes around often comes around, and it looks as if Britain’s ex-Prime Minister, Tony Blair, might yet land the top job of EU President. This in spite of the fact that, in the eyes of many Europeans, his support for the invasion of Iraq should disbar him.
The job of President of the EU’s Council of Ministers has yet to be created – it all depends on how the Irish vote goes at their second Treaty of Lisbon referendum, which will take place in the autumn – but Blair’s name is increasingly being mentioned as a strong contender.
The reason is, somewhat bizarrely, that French President Nicolas Sarkozy’s high-profile leadership, when his country held the currently revolving six-month presidency, has whetted appetites for an EU President who is both active and a household name around the world. And Blair fits the bill.
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