■GERMANY
Recovery will be slow
The country’s economy, battered by the financial market chaos, will not recover to its pre-crisis levels for another four years, the head of the central bank in Europe’s top economy said yesterday. “The economic recovery will take a while. The German economy will not reach the level of prosperity it enjoyed in 2008 until, probably, 2013,” Bundesbank president Axel Weber said in an interview with the Frankfurter Rundschau daily. “And the road up will be bumpy,” he said. Nevertheless, he said the phase of “free fall” was behind the country, which was hit especially hard by a slump in global demand as its economy is highly dependent on exports.
■INTERNET
ComScore, Omniture tie up
Two of the largest companies involved in tracking and analyzing Web traffic are joining forces to measure digital audiences more comprehensively. The partnership involves comScore Inc and Omniture Inc, which last week agreed to a US$1.8 billion takeover by Adobe Systems Inc. ComScore and Omniture were to announce yesterday the launch of a unified audience measurement system. This will combine Omniture’s method of analyzing Web traffic by looking at data collected by Web servers with comScore’s estimates of what is happening across the Web using panels of Internet users recruited for the task.
■ECONOMY
United Korea a powerhouse?
A united Korea — combining Asia’s fourth-biggest economy with one of its poorest — could surpass that of Germany or Japan in economic might in the next 30 to 40 years, US investment bank Goldman Sachs said yesterday. Though North Korea’s planned economy system looks to be on the edge of collapse, it offers a large and cheap workforce, a wealth of minerals that the resource-poor South currently has to import to feed its industry and the likelihood of gains in productivity and its currency once economic reforms take hold. “We project that a united Korea could overtake France, Germany and possibly Japan in 30 to 40 years in terms of GDP in US dollar terms,” it said in a report.
■AVIATION
No green shoots: Qantas
Australian flag-carrier Qantas said yesterday it had yet to see any improvement in business conditions and could not predict the timing of a recovery in the global aviation market. The airline, which last month posted an 88 percent slump in annual net profit of A$117 million (US$101 million), said the aviation industry had never experienced more challenging conditions. “The global outlook remains uncertain and we are yet to see substantial improvements in underlying business conditions,” chairman Leigh Clifford said in the company’s annual report yesterday. “Many factors are in play that could affect the timing of the recovery,” he said, pointing to major capacity increases by Qantas’ domestic and international rivals.
■MINING
Rio Tinto sells Corumba
Rio Tinto has completed the sale of its Corumba iron ore mine in Brazil to mining giant Vale SA for US$750 million, the company said yesterday. The Corumba sale, which was agreed in January, includes a potash project in Argentina and exploration assets in Canada. The Corumba mine produced 2 million tonnes of iron ore last year. Brazil’s Vale said Corumba is rich in direct reduction lump ores, a highly valued type of iron ore which is becoming increasingly scarce around the world.
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