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Monday, October 2,
2000
Two more for Costa
Last Friday saw Carnival Corporation
conclude its previously announced deal to acquire the rest of
Costa Crociere.
"The purchase of the remaining 50
percent of Costa will allow Carnival Corporation to aggressively
expand the operations of Costa, which is Carnival's primary platform
for growing our cruise business in the European market,"
said Micky Arison, Carnival Corporation chairman and CEO.
Today, Costa announced that it has
signed a letter of intent with Italian shipyard Fincantieri Cantieri
Navali S.p.A. for the construction of two 105,000-ton vessels
for delivery in late 2003 and late 2004.
The 2,720-passenger ships, which will be
built at Fincantieri's Sestri shipyard in Genoa, will cost approximately
850 billion lira (approximately $400 million) a copy.
"It's very exciting to be building
these vessels in our hometown of Genoa where Costa Crociere is
based, and furthering our contribution to its economic development,"
said Pier Luigi Foschi, Costa's chairman and CEO.
"We are particularly pleased with this agreement with Costa
Crociere which will allow Fincantieri to resume building large
passenger ships at Genoa Sestri, a historic yard which built
the Rex in the 1930s and the last Italian liner Michelangelo
in the 1960s," said Corrado Antonini, Fincantieri's executive
chairman.
More recently, Fincantieri's cruise ship
construction activities have centered on its Monfalcone and Venice-Marghera
facilities.
This latest agreement renews the association
between Costa and Fincantieri, which began with the construction
of the Costa Classica and Costa Romantica in 1992 and 1993, respectively.
Costa's recently delivered Costa Atlantica
has received rave reviews from travel agents, guests and the
European press. In July, Costa confirmed an order for the sister
ship to the Costa Atlantica for delivery in early 2003. With
this new letter of intent, Costa's order book stands at three
vessels.
Carnival Corporation now has 16 ships on
order, for its various cruise line brands, representing an estimated
value of $7 billion.
EU-Korea consultations on shipbuilding
fail
The row between the European Union
and Korea on shipbuilding prices is headed for the World Trade
Organization (WTO).
The European Commission says that Intensive
discussions held at the end of last week between the Commission
and Korean experts, failed to achieve an effective solution to
the problem of unfair price undercutting by Korean shipbuilders,
raised by the EU.
The Korean side was unable to offer a proposal
which would alleviate EU concerns.
The Commission says it will report to the
European Council in the coming days and propose alternative ways
forward, including a possible action in the WTO under the Trade
Barrier Regulation (TBR).
The discussions focused on the possibility
for Korea Exim Bank to introduce a review mechanism of shipbuilding
export contracts in order to monitor whether the prices offered
by the Korean yards respect the "Normal Value", according
to the definition of the WTO Antidumping Agreement.
The Korean side did not agree to the basic
principle that prices should cover all the costs and that the
application of the antidumping agreement would lead to a significant
increase in prices whose result would be verified on the market
in a short period of time.
In mid-September, Commission antidumping
experts paid exceptional on-the-spot visits to two large Korean
yards to determine whether prices of particular contracts included
all relevant costs. Unfortunately, citing reasons of commercial
confidentiality, one company was not prepared to give specific
information per ship or per contract and to reveal its real costs.
Thus, it was not possible, for the Commission to draw any clearcut
conclusions on the alleged unfair Korean pricing practices.
As a result, the European Commission considers
that a transparency commitment negotiated with the Koreans has
not been fully implemented. More importantly, the main goal of
the bilateral agreement, the stabilization of the market through
the improvement in the level of ship prices, cannot be reached,
due to the Korean's refusal to introduce an effective mechanism
that would have helped to achieve it.
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