Global Strategy and Business

The Competition Commission (CC) the independent public body which conducts inquiries into mergers, and competition announced on Wednesday a reiteration of its ruling for Spanish-owned airports operator BAA to sell two more airports which may include London Stansted. BAA has two years to divest further assets.London Gatwick has already been sold out of the group but. Stansted,Edinburgh or Glasgow airports are under the spotlight which form part of the Spanish Group Ferrovial in 2006.It was hoped sale of Gatwick to US investment fund Global Infrastructure Partners for 1.51 billion pounds in late 2009 would stave off the further sale of its UK assets.The sale of terminal five at Heathrow to a third party was resisted. This comes soon after the public condemnation of the way it handled flights out of the Heathrow at Christmas 2010. http://www.competition-commission.org.uk/

Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne has announced a total of 21 Enterprise Zones throughout the UK as a strategy to create jobs.Businesses operating in these zones will be able to claim 100 per cent discounts on high speed broadband through the tax system.The London Mayor Boris Johnson will be tasked to identify where in capital enterprise zones will be established.It is thought to follow areas of high unemployment or areas effected by high public sector job losses. The Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors have initially responded with the following statement. "It is not clear how effective new enterprise zones will be in stimulating long term sustainable development beyond an initial boost. While the tax breaks and changes to planning restrictions may draw short term investment into an area they also have a number of downsides. The total cost to Government can be expensive and there often needs to be other public investment in areas such as transport inf...

IT Pro  have reported certain IT security breaches which link Iran to attacks aimed at sites run by tech giants including Microsoft and Google. “Countries in North Africa and the Gulf region are facing popular protests and many commentators have identified the internet and in particular social networking sites as a major organising tool for the protests.” Cyber attacks are ongoing issues for large corporations as they achieve global reach many of which are reported to be politically motivated.