Inflight Magazine of Brussels Airlines

Business trends

Images Getty Images, Corbis, photolibrary.com

Boyd Farrow rounds up what’s happening in the business world across Europe

Wheels of change

Public transport survey shines a light on which cities make travelling easy

Those visiting Prague on business should be able to stretch their budget further thanks to Europe’s cheapest public transport (a monthly pass costs just €20) but, according to a new study, Munich has the best. The survey by EuroTest, a group of automobile clubs in 15 countries, found that visitors in 23 cities face a range in quality of transport information, travel times and charges. It labelled nine cities as offering only “acceptable” bus, tram and metro services, and said more must be done to make public transport an attractive alternative to driving. It rated the transport systems on travel time, information available, ease of transfer, costs, operating hours and access to bike and car parking. Public transit was judged to be “good” in 11 cities including Helsinki, Vienna, Prague, Hamburg, Copenhagen, Frankfurt, Barcelona and Rome. Impressively, Prague also offers a free information hotline in three languages.

East is east

Poland looks to China for investment

Poland imported €10bn of goods from China in 2009 – mainly computers, mobile phones and video cameras – but with its robust economy, it’s now hoping to attract large-scale investment from the country. Chinese investment currently stands at a puny €150m a year, with the biggest players being clothing and toy wholesaler GD Poland, based near Warsaw; Min Hoong Development, which trades in real estate (also in the capital); and TCL Corporation, which produces LCD monitors and TVs. The two countries will get a huge opportunity to establish closer ties during the World Expo 2010 in Shanghai, however, which begins on 1 May, and Poland is planning a series of events to promote different sectors of its economy.

One of the most interesting projects aims to establish a Chinese Centre for Transportation and Logistics in the Baltic, which would be used to distribute East Asian products in the region, and ship them on to the rest of Europe. Major opportunities are also opening for Chinese businesses in Poland, with a flurry of projects such as motorways, roads, stadiums and urban construction underway – many connected with the Euro 2012 football tournament. Last year, a Chinese consortium headed by China Overseas Engineering Group won the tender for the construction of sections of a motorway from Łódz to Warsaw.

Laboured idea

Sweden’s employment scheme is met with incredulity

The Swedish Alliance government is demanding that public authorities accept thousands of interns in order to meet employment targets under the Lyftet (Lift) scheme. The Swedish Tax Agency (Skatteverket) alone is obliged to find work for 6,000 trainees, according to business daily Dagens Industri. “When I received the letter I was convinced they had written it wrong, that there was one too many zeros,” an incredulous Elisabeth Bjar, HR director at Skatteverket, is quoted as saying.

The Lyftet scheme aims to occupy some 130,000 unemployed people, but by January this year local authorities had accepted just 20 interns, leading to political panic. However, labour minister Sven Otto Littorin admitted he’s well aware that finding places for 65,000 interns within the state apparatus is unrealistic. “It is a high target, which I am conscious we will not meet with regards to state authorities,” he told the TT news agency.

“But at the same time I think that we have to put pressure on state authorities to take part, in the same way as we have asked the local authorities to do so.” Littorin also acknowledged the likelihood that trainees would not be given anything meaningful to do, but he stated that any activity was better than “just sitting at home and waiting for the benefits to arrive.” He rejected accusations from The Union of Civil Servants that the government is pushing the scheme purely to bring down unemployment figures before the autumn election.

Search and destroy

Google could face European Commission investigation

Google’s search engine and search advertising operations will be the subject of a preliminary monopoly investigation by the EC. The Commission recently began discussions with the online company, having received three written complaints, although it emphasised that its enquiries were highly informal at present. Google revealed that one of the organisations that had filed an objection was Microsoft-owned Ciao – the Munich-born price comparison site that operates in Germany, the UK, France, Italy, Spain, the Netherlands and Sweden. The point raised by Ciao concerned the bidding system for purchasing Google search ads, which are typically sold by auction but are often subject to minimum prices. UK price comparison service Foundem and Ejustice, a French web property focusing on legal matters, stated in separate objections that they had been pushed down Google’s organic search listings to what they believed was an unfair extent.

It could be months before the EC decides whether to officially pursue these matters, and Google has successfully avoided facing such inquiries in the past, despite being the subject of antitrust reviews in the US and Europe. At present it’s estimated that the firm holds a 90% share of the European search advertising market, compared with around 80% in the US.

Northern star

Marketing campaign aims to improve Manchester’s image

Business leaders are to launch a major campaign promoting the quality of life in Manchester in a bid to lure business talent away from London. The Business Leadership Council is proposing marketing that’s targeted at talented workers in the capital, focusing on local culture and the opportunities for career progression. Marketing Manchester and inward investment agency MIDAS are expected to cost the campaign in the coming months. A report commissioned by the Association of Greater Manchester Authorities (AGMA) found that Greater Manchester was struggling to shake off an image problem, making it difficult to attract top business talent. The report’s executive summary described Manchester as “a much better place to live and work than the outside world knows,” but warned that its “poor image is confirmed when visitors view the appearance of the city at its main points of entry around railway stations, main arterial roads and the airport.”

Pancake days

Russian blini company aims to make it big in western Europe

Those after a traditional snack in Moscow will find no shortage of blinis – and most of the city’s blini kiosks and restaurants are operated by Teremok. Founded in 1998 by entrepreneur Mikhail Goncharov, it’s now the largest Russian-owned fast food chain and the fourth largest overall, behind McDonald’s, KFC and Pizza Hut.

Goncharov recently told German broadcaster Deutsche Welle that he got the idea of turning the Russian pancake into a convenient snack from watching crêpes being made on the streets of Paris. He felt that selling blinis through a chain would be a great opportunity, because at the time the only restaurants in post-Soviet Russia were the big US chains. Aged 29, Goncharov opened his first blini kiosk when the Russian stock market crashed in August 1998, and lost his electronics business, but by 2001 he had almost 30 kiosks and restaurants – and this year the company will open its 100th outlet. Goncharov, however, is thinking even bigger, with plans to bring Teremok to the UK, Germany and France, despite competition from the crêpe.

He points out that the blini wouldn’t be the first food with ethnic roots in the East to make it big in Germany: Turkey’s doner kebabs can be bought on just about every corner in every city in the country.

Over the wall?

Committee of specialists created to protect the remains of Berlin’s infamous divide

Berlin may have a complicated relationship with its former wall, but it’s undoubtedly a profitable tourist attraction in a cash-strapped city. Now, the local government is setting up a working group to protect the remains of the barrier and its watchtowers, in order to safeguard the visitor revenues.

The director of the Berliner Mauer Foundation, Axel Klausmeier, explained that the committee will include monument specialists, restorers, engineers and concrete experts, who’ll have a budget of around €450,000 – taken from monies confiscated from defunct former East German parties and mass organisations. Sections of the wall between the north-western district of Wedding and the eastern district of Mitte are particularly in need of repair, where the combination of people chipping pieces off as souvenirs, and 20 years of weather and neglect, have left their mark. In a worst-case scenario, says Klausmeier, sections of the wall could topple over during a storm or as a result of a car crash. The working group will be tasked with finding a solution that maintains the current visibility of the wall, while stabilising and protecting it. One idea is to erect supports along the back, but a number of options are being considered and new ideas are still being sought. “We are still right at the beginning of thinking about it,” said Klausmeier.

Social divide

Facebook is more popular in Eastern Europe

Consumers living in eastern Europe use social networking services such as Facebook and LinkedIn more regularly than their western counterparts, a new study has revealed. According to the Marketers & Consumers, Digital & Connected (MC DC) report from Brussels-based research bureau IAB Europe, 59% of people in eastern Europe had viewed or updated their social network profile in the last month, compared with a continent-wide average of 52%. Similarly, eastern Europeans tended to spend longer on a single online session, with 33% using the web for three hours or more in one sitting.

They were also more likely to use secondary markets for purchasing goods and services on the internet, with 27% buying goods from other web users but just 24% purchasing from dedicated ecommerce portals. Primary markets were more popular in all other areas of Europe, with an average of 57% of netizens across the region having acquired a product or service from an internet vendor in the last year.

Winning performances

Real Madrid and Barcelona top the football club rich list

Spain’s credit outlook may be battling relegation, but two of its football teams have spectacularly outplayed the other big guns to become Europe’s top-earning clubs – and will continue to do so because of lucrative television rights deals. Deloitte’s annual Money League, which ranks football clubs by income, has Real Madrid at the top for the fifth year in a row, with turnover up 10% in the 2008-09 season to €401.4m – making it the first team in any sport to top €400m. The big money story, however, was with fierce rival Barcelona: winning both the Champions League and Spain’s La Liga helped lift the club’s income up 18%, to €366m, pushing Manchester United into third place. The reign of Spain looks set to continue, too, as with Italy moving to collective selling of television rights next season, La Liga will be the only top-five European league that allows clubs to negotiate TV deals individually.

According to Deloitte, Real generated €160.8m from broadcasting rights in 2008-09, with Barcelona just €2.4m behind this. Europe’s top 20 clubs made a total of €3.9bn in revenues last season, up by €26m.

Despite all this, both Real Madrid and Barcelona are big spenders in the transfer market, and are actually among Europe’s most indebted clubs.

In fact, European football’s governing body UEFA is so worried about debt levels – which have reached €6.3bn across the continent – that it’s drawing up rules to rein in clubs’ spending.

This year’s Champions League final is scheduled for 22 May at Real Madrid’s Santiago Bernabéu Stadium.

Leave a Reply