Airlines lose web customers

Airlines lose web customers

By Tom Braithwaite, Retail Correspondent

Published: June 2 2008 23:14 | Last updated: June 2 2008 23:14

Airline websites are falling in popularity, the latest evidence that more customers are pursuing cheaper holiday alternatives at home this summer rather than travelling abroad.

British Airways, Easyjet and Ryanair saw their positions among the top 20 retail websites fall in April against the same month last year in a league table compiled by IMRG and Hitwise, the internet monitoring organisations that rank companies on site visits. Expedia and Lastminute.com travel sites also tumbled.

“I think the travel industry has been declining over the last year or so,” said Robin Goad, director of research at Hitwise. However, he pointed out that the falls could have been exaggerated by established retailers moving quickly up the rankings.

Amazon led the list, which compares retailers’ internet site visits over the last two years, followed by Apple, Play.com, Tesco.com and Argos. Easyjet fell from 8th place to 10th, Ryanair from 9th to 14th and British Airways from 10th to 19th.

The gloomy news for the travel sector contrasts with a positive picture for overall online shopping revealed in another report on Monday, with Verdict Research, the retail analysis company, finding that online spending grew last year at its fastest rate for six years.

The finding – which is based on consumer research – will stoke hopes that internet-focused retailers or bricks-and-mortar chains with a good online operation can avoid the worst of the incipient downturn.

Verdict found that online retail spending rose 35 per cent to £14.7bn last year, with a 5.9 per cent increase in internet users to 33.1m and a 24.7 per cent rise in internet shoppers to 22.6m.

Malcolm Pinkerton, analyst at Verdict, said cheaper broadband, generational shifts and better websites meant “the channel will find itself extremely well-placed to capitalise on the falling consumer confidence and lower levels of disposable income currently impacting the retail market”.

That phenomenon has lured online some previously sceptical traditional retailers such as River Island, making its debut at 34 in the IMRG/Hitwise table, and caused Marks and Spencer and Next to broaden the range of products offered online in a successful attempt to capture different areas of retail spending.

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Hyundai goes up a gear away from middle lane

By Raphael Minder and Song Jung-a

Published: June 3 2008 02:57 | Last updated: June 3 2008 02:57

Hyundai Motor is taking two steps this month that the South Korean carmaker believes will be critical to strengthening its global presence.

On Thursday, Hyundai is holding the groundbreaking ceremony for its first Russian car factory. Located near St Petersburg, the plant will produce 100,000 cars a year in a country that Hyundai believes will become Europe’s biggest car market within three to five years.

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Greeks chart new course to public markets

By Robert Wright, Transport Correspondent

Published: June 3 2008 04:37 | Last updated: June 3 2008 04:37

Listening to Nikolas Tsakos, one of Greece’s leading shipowners, talking about his grandmother reveals much about why his compatriots control such a high proportion of the world’s ships. Even as she neared her death aged 98 in 2001, Mr Tsakos recalls, Maria Tsakos continued to believe there was no higher calling for a man than that of a sea captain – a role which in her formative years also equated with being a shipowner. It reflected the value system during her childhood on the Aegean island of Chios in the early 1900s.

“When you would introduce her to someone who was a doctor or a lawyer, she would say, ‘Oh dear, the poor man couldn’t become a captain’,” Mr Tsakos recalls.

Yet the story of Mrs Tsakos also illustrates how readily Greece’s traditional shipowning culture has adapted to the growing complexity and scale of demands on the sector.

When Mrs Tsakos was growing up, her family, who have owned ships since 1880, were captain-shipowners taking Chios’s lemons and other cargoes around the Mediterranean. In 1970, her son, Panagiotis Tsakos, founded the private Tsakos Group, which owns 61 vessels, mainly dry bulk carriers for products such as iron ore.

By the time she died, another family enterprise, Tsakos Energy Navigation (Ten), whose chief executive is Nikolas Tsakos, was listed on the New York Stock Exchange. The company, which owns 43 oil and gas tankers, is still 30 per cent owned by family interests.

Criticism over conflict of interest raises passions

There are few surer ways to start an argument with the power-brokers behind the large, quoted Athens-based shipping companies than to ask how they manage potential conflicts of interest between their public and private interests.

Critics contend that shipowners with private interests are likely to favour their private companies over public interests when allocating the most lucrative charters. There are also questions over ship management. Many shipowners have private companies arranging charters and hiring crews and charge the public companies for their services.

However, conflicts between their public and private shipowning businesses are unlikely, most shipowners argue. Even for the largest businesses there is little chance the two will both have suitable vessels available to take up a charter just when a charterer is looking for one.

Nikolas Tsakos of Tsakos Energy Navigation insists Ten’s fleet and the ships owned by the privately held Tsakos Group are different enough for there to be no divided loyalties.

“In our mind there is no conflict, but to others there could be,” he says. “That’s why we’ve kept Ten as a pure tanker company. All the other assets are held by the private arm, so there’s no commercial conflict. The family doesn’t own tankers that compete with Ten.”

Others have taken their interests public to avoid conflicts. Athens-based, New York-listed Excel Maritime, controlled by the Panayotides family, controls Oceanaut, another dry bulk operator, while the family is also a shareholder in Torm, a Copenhagen-listed product tanker operator. The companies run their own ship-management arms – to avoid conflicts – and the family holds just five ships privately.

However, not all owners accept criticism is justified. George Economou, whose Dry Ships has attracted particular criticism over its links with Mr Economou’s private operations, says the issues were spelt out in Dry Ships’ prospectus when it listed on Nasdaq. His company charges Dry Ships fees lower than the industry average. Instead, he suggests, investors should look at the company’s record of generating earnings for shareholders.

The half-public, half-private model is becoming increasingly common among the clutch of larger owners that stand out among the 1,000-plus shipowning companies in the country.

George Economou, chief executive of DryShips, the largest publicly listed dry bulk shipowner with 38 ships, holds another 52 dry bulk ships and 23 tankers through Cardiff Marine, his private company.

Sir Stelios Haji-Ioannou, founder of easyJet, the budget airline, founded Stelmar, a New York-listed tanker operator since taken over by a competitor, before entering the airline business. At the same time, his father was maintaining privately held Troodos Shipping, one of the world’s largest owners of oil tankers.

The challenge for Greek shipowners is to blend the advantages that come from public listings with the traditional strengths of the privately owned companies.

According to Nikolas Tsakos, the listing trend started partly because of the pressure, after pollution disasters such as 1989’s Exxon Valdez oil spill in Alaska, to be open and accountable.

He became interested in public listing after writing a thesis at London’s City University in the 1980s on the role of publicly listed partnerships in real estate, which he saw as a similar industry to shipowning.

“I felt that the industry needed to mature and go onto the equity markets,” Mr Tsakos says.

The family first listed the now-defunct Global Ocean Carriers on the American Stock Exchange in 1988 and took TEN public – initially on the Oslo Stock Exchange – in 1993.

Gabriel Panayotides, chairman and controlling shareholder of Athens-based, New York-listed Excel Maritime, says listing has also brought quicker, easier access to capital than the traditional accumulation of retained profits.

“The capital markets do offer this mechanism of being able to attract large capital,” he says.

Public listing also guarantees owners their legacy will not dissipate like that of Aristotle Onassis and the other Golden Greeks who dominated the post-second world war shipping boom, according to John Coustas, president and chief executive of Danaos Corporation, an Athens-based, New York-listed shipowner.

“If you look around all the big names of the 1960s – Niarchos, Onassis, Latsis, every one guys who were really kings of the oceans – now their presence is either zero or minimal,” he says. “That’s because really nobody in the second generation was interested.”

However, the worry is that Greek owners’ traditional adroitness in buying or selling ships just as volatile markets are changing could be sapped by the need to meet public disclosure requirements.

For Nikolas Tsakos, that is a powerful reason to maintain a foot in the private camp in the form of Tsakos Group. The family also tries to prevent TEN from becoming what Mr Tsakos calls a “faceless corporation”, while obeying the US’s listing rules. “We try still to have this family spirit and a feeling that’s dynamic,” he says.

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丸紅や日本風力開発などグリーン電力証書販売

　丸紅や日本風力開発などは、風力や太陽光など二酸化炭素（ＣＯ2）を排出しない新エネルギー発電を国内で手掛けると発行できる「グリーン電力証書」を企業向けなどに販売する。証書をＣＯ2の「排出枠」とみなせるような制度の導入に向けて政府が議論を進めており、優遇策が強化されると見込んで事業化する。日本は欧米に比べ新エネの普及策が遅れていたが、同証書の取引が拡大すれば、環境対応型発電の拡大にもつながる。

　風力発電大手の日本風力開発は青森県と佐賀県で自らが運営する風力発電所を対象にグリーン電力証書を発行し、国内企業に販売する。すでに2月から5月までに両発電所で得た電力の一部、230万キロワット時分を証書化してある。

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読売広告社、ネット広告会社に20％出資

　読売広告社はネット広告のデベロップジャパン（東京・港）に20％出資する。ネットを活用した独自の不動産広告で強みを持つデベロップジャパンと連携し、顧客企業への企画・提案力を高める。

　デベロップジャパンの発行済み株式の20％に当たる1000株を6日までに取得する。取得金額は2億円程度とみられる。不動産の物件情報の検索にインターネットを活用するケースが増えている。今後、読売広告社はテレビや新聞・雑誌などとネットを連動した広告を展開する。

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伊藤忠食品とエキサイト、ネットに「食品倉庫」

　食品卸大手の伊藤忠食品とポータル（玄関）サイト運営のエキサイトは共同で3日、食品のデータベースのサイトを立ち上げる。掲載した情報を個人のブログやスーパーの通販サイトなどに張り付けてもらい、消費者への販売につなげる。大手メーカーの加工食品など1500品目をそろえ、7月までに無添加・低農薬の生鮮品なども加えて1800品目に増やす。

　大手食品卸がネット事業者とこの種のサイトを立ち上げるのは珍しい。

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神戸製鋼、中国の工場拡大　船舶向け溶接材

　神戸製鋼所は中国・山東省で建設している船舶向け溶接材の工場に追加投資し、月産能力を最大で従来計画の5倍にあたる5000トンに拡大する。当初計画分は2009年4月に稼働し、追加分は12年以降に操業を始める。中国で造船所の建設ラッシュが続き、製造に不可欠な溶接材の需要が急拡大しているのに対応する。

　当初は月産1000トンの工場を建設する計画だった。すでに着工している部分も合わせた総投資額は60億円程度になるとみられる。造船需要の高まりで中国は年10％前後のペースで溶接材の需要が急拡大しており、今後も同様のペースで引き合いが増えると判断。生産能力を月3000トン―同5000トンに引き上げる方針だ。主要ユーザーの日系や韓国系の造船企業が現地への進出を加速させていることに対応する。

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大手私鉄４社、1350億円投資計画　雨の遅れ軽減に重点

　神奈川県内を走る大手私鉄４社の2008年度の設備投資計画が出そろった。４社合計で安全対策や新型車両の導入などに計1351億円を投じる。各社とも輸送障害の軽減策が大きな柱。台風や大雨の際の被害を避ける装置の新設や、故障に強い車両への代替を進める。将来の相互直通運転をにらんだ設備投資や駅舎のバリアフリー化にも積極的に取り組む。

　４社の設備投資総額は07年度比で約１割減。07年度に新型の特急ロマンスカーや通勤電車を新造した小田急電鉄が約４割減らした以外は、各社の設備投資額はほぼ横ばいだった。

　東京急行電鉄は、2013年春を予定している東京メトロ副都心線と東横線の乗り入れをにらみ、６月から横浜駅でホームの延伸工事を始める。10両編成の電車が停車できるよう、渋谷側と元町・中華街側合わせて計40メートル延ばす計画だ。