Italian company Alenia Aeronautica will take part in development of the Sonic Cruiser, the Boeing Co. announced Tuesday. The arrangement is similar to recently announced deals with Japanese suppliers. Boeing says it hopes to bring in experts from potential Sonic Cruiser partners early on in the design process. Alenia will work on structural materials for the new plane. Alenia already provides parts for a number of Boeing planes, including 767s and 777s, and Alenia’s Aeronavali unit does modification and service work for Boeing’s military and commercial airplanes.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration on Tuesday denied Bridgestone/Firestone Inc.’s request for a defect investigation into the Ford Explorer sport utility vehicle. The request by the tire maker came after a dispute between it and Ford Motor Co. over what caused Firestone tires to experience tread separations leading to rollover accidents, especially on Ford Explorers where they were installed as original equipment. NHTSA said the decision followed “an extensive analysis of agency data and information provided by Firestone and Ford.”
ImClone Systems Inc. on Tuesday rejected Bristol-Myers Squibb’s proposal to fundamentally restructure their $2 billion partnership, saying the deal was not in the best interest of its shareholders. Bristol was seeking to renegotiate the agreement because ImClone has been plagued by troubles since the Food and Drug Administration refused to accept the company’s application to review Erbitux, which was touted as a blockbuster cancer drug. Bristol was seeking to remove two key members of ImClone’s management, eliminate further payments to the company and receive a bigger share of Erbitux’s revenues if the drug is ever approved. Bristol stunned the pharmaceutical industry late last year by spending $1 billion to purchase 19.9 percent of ImClone and paying the company an additional $200 million for signing the deal.
The global economic downturn, a plunge in jet fuel sales after Sept. 11 and an unusually warm winter in the United States combined to cut BP PLC’s fourth-quarter profit by nearly two-thirds, the energy group said Tuesday. BP posted a net profit for the three months ending Dec. 31 of $1.06 billion, compared with $2.8 billion in the year-earlier quarter. Excluding one-time items, operating profits fell to $2.2 billion from $4.1 billion. The company’s profit for all of 2001 fell to $9.9 billion from $11.2 billion in 2000.
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