World Buiness Quick Take

■ Aviation
Northwest orders Boeings
Boeing Co, the world's No. 2 commercial-airplane maker, won an order from Northwest Airlines Corp for 18 of its new 787 Dreamliners valued at about US$2.16 billion, beating Airbus SAS for the third time in two weeks. Northwest, the fourth-largest US airline, also took options on 50 additional planes. Deliveries of the aircraft, to be used on international routes to Europe and Asia, will begin in August 2008, the St. Paul, Minnesota-based carrier said in a statement yesterday. The order is a blow for Airbus, whose planes make up a bigger portion of Northwest's fleet than Boeing aircraft. Northwest partner Continental Airlines Inc ordered 10 787s in December, becoming the first operating US airline to buy the planes.

■ Economy
HK mulls interest-rate hikes
Hong Kong's central banker said yesterday he would like to see local interest rates rise to head off inflation. Assets denominated in Hong Kong dollars have been a major beneficiary of a recent wave of market speculation that China is preparing to let the yuan appreciate. Although Hong Kong's own peg to the US dollar usually means that its interest rates closely track those of the US, the surge in local liquidity in recent weeks has kept local rates unusually low. "If capital keeps coming in, our monetary environment will be more relaxed than in the US," Joseph Yam, chief executive of the Hong Kong Monetary Authority, told lawmakers. "Personally, I don't want to see this relaxed monetary environment continue for too long." Yam said low interest rates have fueled rises in property prices and hence inflation, so keeping rates low could further accelerate those increases.

■ Power Plants
Allen invests in Bangladesh
A billionaire co-founder of Microsoft Corp plans to spend US$1.6 billion building Bangladesh power and fertilizer plants, marking the second-biggest investment into the poor but fast-growing nation behind a US$2.5 billion project by India's Tata group. Paul Allen, the world's seventh-richest person according to Forbes magazine, will make the investment through Global Vulcan Energy International, a wholly-owned subsidiary of his personal investment vehicle, Vulcan Capital. "We signed a memorandum of understanding on Thursday with the US energy firm, which will invest US$1.6 billion in the next three years," said Mahmudur Rahman, executive chairman of Bangladesh's Board of Investment. Vulcan will spend US$900 million of Allen's US$21 billion fortune building a number of gas-run power plants with a total 1,800 megawatts (MW) of capacity -- equivalent to almost half of existing national capacity.

■ Energy
Underinvestment at 20%
Energy companies are underinvesting in new oil and gas production capacity by as much as 20 percent, the Financial Times said, citing an interview with International Energy Agency (IEA) chief economist Fatih Birol. Birol said investment in the oil sector was between 15 percent and 20 percent less last year than what was needed to meet IEA estimates for the next 25 years, the FT said. The underinvestment was the result of listed companies returning funds to shareholders and international companies' lack of access to countries with large reserves, the FT cited Birol as saying.