Azure Global : 06/27/13

Thursday 27 June 2013

Rolls-Royce missed several chances to fix A380 engine problem – safety report

Australian Transport Safety Bureau says company knew three years before Qantas blowout that parts failed to meet standards

Rolls-Royce missed several chances over a three-year period to fix a problem that caused an engine blowout on a Qantas A380 jet with more than 450 people on board in 2010, according to a report by Australia's aviation safety body.

The report by the Australian Transport Safety Bureau (ATSB) detailed how faulty manufacturing processes had led to one of Rolls-Royce's Trent 900 engines exploding at 2,100 metres (7,000ft) over Indonesia on a flight from Singapore to Sydney in November 2010.

According to the ATSB report, Rolls-Royce knew at least three years before the accident that components manufactured at its Hucknall plant in Nottingham failed to conform to design standards. An initial investigation by the company in 2007 failed to understand the consequences of using parts that did not match the design specification.

The damaged engine of Qantas's A380 superjumbo after it made an emergency landing at Changi airport In 2009, a Rolls-Royce engineer identified the potential risk of these defective parts, but the company failed to carry out an investigation into what this would mean for its fleet of Trent 900 engines.

Rolls-Royce missed "a number of opportunities … generally because of ambiguities within the manufacturer's procedures and the non-adherence by a number of the manufacturing staff to those procedures", the ATSB report concluded. The safety agency also highlighted cultural flaws at the Hucknall plant, where it was acceptable not to report so-called minor deviations in parts.

This was the first major safety scare for the Airbus A380 jet and resulted in Qantas temporarily grounding its entire fleet – although Airbus subsequently said the aircraft's resilience was proven by its ability to land despite severe damage to its left wing.

The A380 superjumbo was just minutes into its flight after takeoff from Changi airport Singapore when members of the crew heard two loud bangs. A faulty feed pipe had cracked causing oil to spray into one of the plane's four engines, which burst into flames. Several passengers saw fuel escaping from the under the affected wing.

The pilot, praised for his competence by the ATSB, returned to Singapore and brought the stricken plane down just 150 metres from the end of the runway. None of the 440 passengers and 24 cabin crew were injured, although several homes beneath the flight path were badly damaged when fragments from the engine turbine smashed into walls.

Since the accident, Rolls-Royce has introduced software that would shut down a Trent 900 engine to prevent a repeat occurrence. The ATSB, which issued a safety recommendation to Rolls-Royce in December 2010, said it was satisfied with the steps taken regarding Trent 900 engines in A380 planes, adding that quality control at Hucknall had improved.

Rolls-Royce said it accepted the conclusions of the ATSB report. "On this occasion we clearly fell short," said Colin Smith, director of engineering and technology at Rolls-Royce. "We support the ATSB's conclusions and, as the report notes, have already applied the lessons learned throughout our engineering, manufacturing and quality assurance procedures to prevent this type of accident from happening again."

The engine manufacturer agreed to pay Qantas A$95m (£62m) in a 2011 settlement.

Article Source : http://www.guardian.co.uk

Azure Global’s vision is to be widely recognized as a reputed firm of financial business advisors, achieving real growth for ambitious companies and to become the first choice for F&A outsourcing for accountancy practices and businesses alike and if u want to Setup ur business in United Kingdom then its not difficult in this modern age for more info visit our site Azure Global and join us also On Facebook

UK avoided double-dip recession in 2011, revised official data shows

But initial collapse in output following financial crash was bigger than first thought, Office for National Statistics says

Britain never suffered a double-dip recession in 2012 but suffered a deeper collapse in output following the financial crash than previously thought, according to new data that show the economy is even further away from a full recovery.

The Office for National Statistics has reworked its quarterly growth figures for the beginning of last year to show a flat performance instead of previous estimates of a 0.1% decline. Without a fall in GDP in the first three months of 2012, Britain did not suffer two consecutive quarters of negative growth that would have resulted in its second recession in three years – otherwise known as a double-dip.

The ONS said, however, that the first post-crunch recession in 2008/2009 was deeper than first estimated, meaning that economic output is now 3.9% lower than its pre-crash peak, compared with a previous estimate of 2.6%.

David Tinsley, UK economist at investment bank BNP Paribas, said the figures revealed a weak economy in need of further stimulus from the Bank of England.

"The data highlights both the damage done to the economy following the crisis and the size of the challenge still facing it to rebalance. Unless it bounces considerably it raises serious concerns that after a solid second quarter, growth will at best be weak. These are good arguments for new Bank of England governor Mark Carney to consider a significant easing in policy as early as next week."

George Osborne will be cheered that the double dip has been erased from the economic history books

Carney takes over from Sir Mervyn King on Monday and is under pressure in some quarters to take a more active role than his predecessor. But the nine-strong monetary policy committee that he will head has shown little appetite in recent months to pump further central bank funds into the economy, under the £375bn quantitative easing programme. King and two other committee members have voted since February to increase the QE stock by £25bn, only to be blocked by the remaining six.

Jeremy Cook, the chief economist at the foreign exchange firm World First said Carney and the chancellor need to take further action to bring about a sustainable recovery.

"Whether the UK entered a double-dip or - as today's numbers show, it didn't - matters little to the man on the street who is seeing large falls in real-term wage growth as a result of the lack of business output. Sterling has fallen in the aftermath of this announcement, and although this data is three months old and could be considered stale, the lack of real improvement since leaves the government and the new Bank of England governor a lot to do."

Coming a day after George Osborne was forced to announce a further £11.5bn of cuts to government spending in 2015/16, the news that a double-dip recession has been written out of the economic history books will cheer the Treasury. Ministers have battled to show that the economy was healthier than official statistics showed during the turbulent years of 2011 and 2012, which were marred by the euro zone crisis and fears that the currency zone would break up.

Separate figures revealed the economy is further away from getting back to its early 2008 peak and disposable incomes are at levels last seen in 1987. The ONS said the downturn in 2008/09 saw GDP decline by 7.2%, from the previous estimate of 6.3%.

A deeper recession and a prolonged period of low growth leaves the government with a higher mountain to climb to restore the economy back to health, said analysts.

Figures showing a long-term fall in disposable incomes emphasised the difficult task facing the Treasury as it struggles to boost consumer confidence and high street spending, both of which remain weak. Household disposable income fell by 1.7% in the first three months of 2013 compared with the previous quarter, which left it down by 0.3% year on year.

Howard Archer, the chief UK economist at IHS Global Insight, said the fall "undoubtedly reflected higher inflation, very low wage growth and faltering employment at the start of the year".

Consumer spending continued to rise, however, which Archer said was partly financed by a drop in the household savings ratio to 4.2% from 5.9% in the fourth quarter of 2012 and 7.1% in the third quarter. "This highlights the fact that consumers do still face serious headwinds," he said.

Chris Leslie, Labour's shadow financial secretary to the Treasury, said the revised figures showed the economy has grown by 1.1% since 2010, compared to the 6% forecast at the time.

"That's why living standards are falling and the deficit is not coming down."

Article Source : http://www.guardian.co.uk

Bank of England's Miles sees good reasons for low gilt yields

British government bond yields have good reason to remain low, despite a recent jump due to market expectations that the U.S. Federal Reserve may scale back its bond purchase programme, a senior Bank of England official said on Wednesday.
David Miles, an external member of the BoE's rate-setting Monetary Policy Committee, said the still-low current level of gilt yields appropriately reflected investors' risk aversion and market expectations that Bank of England rates will stay low.

He also raised the prospect that the BoE may hold some of the 375 billion pounds of gilts bought under its asset purchase programme indefinitely, even after monetary policy returns to normal - in contrast to the general assumption that almost all would be sold back to the market.

Miles's comments, in a speech to be delivered to a bond investors' conference, come less than a day after BoE Governor Mervyn King said that markets had "jumped the gun" by starting to price in tighter monetary policy.

Ten-year gilt yields hit a 20-month high of 2.597 percent on Monday, having risen almost 50 basis points since Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke said last week that the U.S. economy is growing fast enough for the central bank to slow its bond-buying stimulus later this year.

Miles dismissed the idea that this marked the beginning of the end for what central bank critics say is a bubble in government bond prices caused by too much quantitative easing.

"Yields on UK government debt - both in nominal and real terms - are unusually low," he said. "(But) there are good reasons why yields on safe government bonds should be low today. I think some people are far too quick to label this a "bubble"."

The good reasons for low British government bond yields included investors' substantially greater risk aversion than before the financial crisis, and expectations that the BoE would keep offical interest rates low, Miles added.

Miles, a finance professor, has consistently voted for more BoE bond purchases since November and effectively endorsed market expectations for more loose monetary policy.

"I do not think we should be in any hurry in the UK to move the monetary policy dials back to more normal settings - indeed it might well be right for the next move in the UK to push them even further to give more support to demand," he said.

When the time did come to tighten monetary policy and sell back gilts, more normal market conditions should limit the impact on gilt prices, he added.

Miles, whose non-renewable term on the MPC expires in May 2015, also floated the possibility that the BoE might want to hold on to some gilts as a counterweight to increased cash deposited by commercial banks.

"It is very far from clear that returning monetary policy to a normal setting means that the Bank of England balance sheet will shrink back to where it was before the crisis," he said.

Article Source :http://uk.reuters.com

Osborne plans 3 billion pound boost for affordable housing

Britain will invest an additional 3 billion pounds in affordable housing in 2015, Chancellor George Osborne said on Wednesday.

Rapid house price inflation over the past two decades has made it hard for young people to get on the housing ladder, and a lack of local authority homes has led to long waiting lists.

"We're committing over 3 billion pounds capital investment in affordable housing and we will extend the Troubled Families Programme to reach 400,000 more vulnerable families who need extra support," Osborne said.

Osborne was addressing parliament on his plans for a round of government spending cuts of 11.5 billion pounds in the 2015/16 fiscal year.

Article Source :http://uk.reuters.com

Queen scores record profit from booming London property

The Crown Estate - owned by the Queen - on Thursday said it made record profit in the year to March, thanks to the strong performance of its central London properties.

Crown Estate's 5.2 percent rise in profits to 252.6 million pounds gives the Queen a 38 million pounds 2014/15 payout, pegged at 15 percent of the total by a 2012 law designed to link her income to the UK's economic health.

The rest of the profits go to the Treasury. Chancellor George Osborne on Wednesday detailed 11.5 billion pounds of spending cuts.

Owner of wind farms and most of Britain's sea bed along with its Regent Street properties, the company has outperformed the wider economy due to strong overseas interest in London property and the UK's growing reliance on green energy.

"We are proud that another record Crown Estate performance will again make a strong contribution to the nation's finances," said Chairman Stuart Hampson. The company's property portfolio is now worth 8.1 billion pounds.

The Queen - whose payout rose 20 percent to 36 million this year - was previously paid by taxpayers through an allowance set by parliament and other government grants.

It is not allowed to borrow in capital markets and has formed joint ventures with overseas funds to finance its redevelopment plans. In May, it signed a 320 million pound deal with Oxford Properties, owned by one of Canada's largest pension funds, to redevelop London's upmarket St James's Market district.

The Queen, who celebrated the 60th anniversary of her coronation earlier this month, uses her salary mainly to pay the royal household's staff as well as items such as laundry, stationery and official functions.

The Crown Estate belongs to the reigning king or queen but its properties cannot be sold by the monarch. King George III ceded its profits to the government in 1760.

Article Source :http://uk.reuters.com

RBS steps up small business lending after government calls

Royal Bank of Scotland said it had identified thousands of British companies it could offer 1.7 billion pounds of extra credit to, as it responds to government calls for banks to increase lending to small businesses.

Britain's government and central bank are concerned that poor access to finance, particularly for smaller firms, may thwart a sustainable recovery from the country's worst slump in decades.

RBS has come under pressure to increase lending because the government controls 81 percent of the bank after pumping 45.5 billion pounds in to keep it afloat during the 2008 financial crisis.

The bank said it and its subsidiary NatWest had contacted more than 20,000 small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) - existing customers - and told them they were eligible to borrow from the 1.7 billion pound credit pot, on top of what they were already borrowing from RBS.

It said the next stage of the programme would see the bank target a further 100,000 SME customers. More than one million SMEs bank with RBS.

Small business lobby group the Forum for Private Business said it welcomed the RBS initiative as long as the bank was evaluating lending opportunities properly.

"Experience tells us to be cautious here, with RBS's qualifying criteria stipulating the offer is only being made to 'credit worthy' businesses. We hope this doesn't mean they're adopting an ultra-hard line approach to risk, otherwise most of the cash available will stay in RBS's coffers," said spokesman Robert Downes.

Mike Cherry, national policy chairman of the Federation of Small Businesses, described the RBS initiative as "a step in the right direction", but reminded SMEs to make sure the terms and overall costs of finance were fair and competitive.

Banks should also offer less established businesses like start-ups the credit they need, he said.

Earlier this year, the government extended its Funding for Lending Scheme, which provides banks with cheap funding to encourage them to lend to households and businesses, but recent data showed business lending has actually fallen versus last year.

Article Source :http://uk.reuters.com