EoW May 2009

could include its attraction for low-cost capital, with risk spread across countries and commodities. The behemoth would also be large enough to compete with Australian-British giants Rio Tinto and BHP Billiton, according to Mr Read “a long-held dream of Russian tycoons.” The merger proposed by two such people – Norilsk Nickel shareholders Vladimir Potanin and Oleg Deripaska – would combine that company with Evraz; the mining and metals firm Metalloinvest; steel and coal producer Mechel; and potash producer Uralkali. The deal could also include Russia’s VSMPO-Avisma, whose titanium customers include the Gresham (Oregon) plant of Boeing Co, the Chicago-based plane maker. In return for liquidating debts the Kremlin, through its arms agency Russian Technologies, would receive a 25% stake plus one share of stock in the merged colossus. For their part, US customers of Evraz Oregon Steel told the ❈ ❈ Oregonian that Russian government involvement couldmean a helping hand at the right time. Lower steel prices since last summer had imposed curtailments at the company’s spiral pipe mill and at Canadian plants bought in a $4 billion deal last year. But improvement in domestic credit markets would favour a rebound in steel prices as early as this summer, with all that that promises for the 80-year-old Oregon business and its clientele. Alan Humbard, purchasing manager at Fought & Co, a fabricator that buys slabs from Evraz Oregon Steel, said, “It might help keep them from closing up some things here.” Writing in the International Herald Tribune on the “sliver of France” that is French Guiana, Simon Romero cited its prominence in commercial satellite launching as a sign of a much-diminished US presence in that corner of the evolving world economy. Located on the northern coast of South America, French Guiana is an integral part of the French Republic and notable for the Guiana Space Centre. This spaceport, in the commune of Kourou, is a joint enterprise of the government of France and the Paris-based European Space Agency (ESA). “The driving force behind Kourou’s development is Arianespace, a French company that began as a poor cousin to NASA [the US National Aeronautics and Space Administration] nearly three decades ago,” wrote Mr Romero. “Today, it has edged past Boeing and Lockheed Martin to become the leading player in the$3.2 billion commercial-satellite-launching industry,” accounting for about half of all the tonnage sent into orbit for business purposes each year. (“In the Jungle, a Com- mercial Space Coup for France”). To be sure, commercial space is a small field when compared with the military and government satellite business still dominated by the US and Russia. But Mr Romero pointed out that it encompasses the launching Space The US, once dominant in the commercial space industry, has relinquished the lead to France

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EuroWire – May 2009